To Boldly Hoof It
by StarscreamPrime
Summary: A year has passed since the events of Equestrian Knights, but now Blueblood and his friends have to travel into space to save Equestria from a giant plot hole. A MLP FiM parody of TGWTG's 'To Boldly Flee'. This is the sequel to my other story Equestrian Knights.
1. Prologue

The little colt, Prince Blueblood, sat at his desk in magic kindergarten in Canterlot. Blueblood was casually levitating a pencil with his magic to drawing a picture of himself as a spacepony in his notebook, only half paying attention to the teacher's lecture.

Blueblood saw the little purple filly named Twilight Sparkle out of the corner of his eye sitting ahead of him, raising her hoof in the air eagerly to answer one of the teachers questions.

How he hated her.

Twilight Sparkle was Celestia's hoof picked apprentice in magic. But he knew that the only reason Celestia had picked her to be her student was just because the little nerd had been born lucky. She had been born with extremely great and rare magical potential. And just because of that, that annoying purple commoner had been blessed with all the privileges and training of that of a royal. It wasn't fair!

Not that he himself cared about learning great magic. He had no interest in mastering advanced spells or things of that nature. Although, truthfully, he didn't really know _what_ he was interested in. He didn't care about learning magic, and he had no interest in the other lessons and practices his parents forced him to take. He hadn't gotten his cutiemark yet, so he had no idea what his special talent was yet. He _did_ enjoy drawing and painting. Art class was always his favorite class in school, although he admittedly wasn't very good at it, so he doubted his cutiemark would be that.

He was snapped out of his thoughts as a yard stick slammed down on his desk with a loud snap, causing him to drop his pencil out of his levitation. He looked up and saw the teacher glaring down at him.

"Young Prince, it is not time for art class yet," she said. "Stop your doodling, and pay attention!"

Blueblood huffed and reluctantly closed his notebook. The other students all giggled at him as the teacher walked back up to the front of the class room.

Blueblood sat there and listened as the teacher resumed her lecture.

"Now where was I," the teacher said. "Oh yes. Not long after the unicorns, pegisi, and earth ponies realized that peace and love were better than petty fighting, the alicorn Princesses, our wonderful ruler, Princess Celestia, and her late sister, Princess Luna, came and helped us build a new kingdom here in Equestria, and also helped us continue to learn about the joys of love and peace and togetherness, and put us on the path to our destiny. In time, other races began to accept our way of life and join us, like donkeys, thestrals, and the crystal ponies. But unfortunately, creatures such as the griffons, dragons, diamond dogs, and many others, were not so enlightened. They did not understand the happiness that love and peace could bring. They even attacked us; they were so full of hatred and arrogance. But luckily, we had Princesses and the Elements of Harmony to protect us from such evils. And so, today, all who embrace love and peace in Equestria continue to prosper and live happy lives."

Twilight Sparkle raised her hoof up into the air again.

"Yes Twilight?" said the teacher.

Twilight lowered her hoof and spoke. "Why were those other races even resisting us to begin with? Why wouldn't they want peace and love and togetherness like we do?"

"An excellent question, Twilight."

"I heard that dragons like to kidnap ponies and feed off their love like food!" said some other filly.

"That's changelings, you moron!" said a colt behind her. "Dragons eat rocks!"

"Changelings aren't real!" she spat back at him.

"They are too!"

"CHILDREN!" the teacher raised her voice. "Remember, no fighting!"

The class settled down.

The teacher continued. "It is true that there are dangers out in the untamed regions of the world. So with how perfect our lives here in Equestria are thanks to our wonderful Princess, why then do creatures like the griffons, the dragons, and the diamond dogs continue to resist our way of life?"

"Because we meddle," said Blueblood without raising his hoof.

Everyone looked over at Blueblood.

"Blueblood?" said the teacher.

"We try to tell them how they should live their lives," Blueblood continued. "We try to make them live like us. Tell them what to do, what not to do, what to think, and what not to think. We try to force our morals and lifestyles onto them, and they don't like it."

The teacher smiled and walked over to Blueblood's desk. "Young Prince, we aren't trying to tell them what to think," she said sweetly. "We're just trying to show them _how_ to live right."

Suddenly, Blueblood heard the bell for recess. Only it didn't sound like the bell for recess. It sounded more like his alarm clock.

Alarm clock?

* * *

Prince Blueblood suddenly jolted awake. He looked around him. He was in his bedroom at his estate in bed. He looked at himself. He wasn't a little colt. He was an adult stallion. He threw his covers off of himself and looked at his flank. His compass rose cutiemark was there, right where it was supposed to be.

Blueblood sighed and rubbed his front hooves to his temples. "The same dream again," he muttered to himself. "That's five nights in a row now. Why am I suddenly dreaming about my school days?"

Blueblood once again shook his head of the dream, just like he had been doing for the past several mornings, and got out of bed and walked out of his bedroom.

After using the bathroom, he walked downstairs, hearing the echo of his own hoof steps as he went, remaining him of just how big and empty his mansion now was. After his loss of money, he had to let the many servants he had used to have go, and now only had one house keeper, who only came once a week. So the rest of the time he had to take care of himself.

He wasn't upset by this. At least not any more. After a year, he had grown quite accustom to this.

He went to the kitchen to prepare himself some breakfast, turning on the radio as he did so. As he got some coffee and breakfast.

"In other news," the voice of Vinyl Scratch on the radio spoke, "ponies are still baffled by the unusual occurrences as of late. Ponies are still making claims of, how they describe them, cracks appearing in thin air, glowing with bright light, and then disappearing. It is still unconfirmed if these reports are true or not. More on that later. Also, we may have an epidemic on our hands. Ponies have been reported to be having strange dreams, headaches, visions, and even sleepwalking. Doctors are baffled, but what is curious about this is that the one thing the ponies with these symptoms all have in common is that they are all unicorns. Hmmm. This is Vinyl Scratch, and I'll be keeping you company all day right here on Equestria's number one radio station!"

Just then, the song 'Equestria Girls' started playing on the radio. Blueblood quickly flicked the radio off with his magic.

"I hate that song!" he muttered as he took a sip from his coffee.

"WELL _I_ LOVE THAT SONG!" a white mare with a yellow blond mane and tail shouted in a high pitched voice as she suddenly dropped down in front of Blueblood from out of no where.

"GAAAAAHHHHH!" Blueblood screamed as he fell backwards onto the floor, his hot coffee spilling all over him. "GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" he screamed again in pain.

The white Pegasus mare, whose name was Surprise, brought her hooves to her mouth with a gasp at Blueblood's misfortune. "Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry, Blue! Here, let me help you up!"

She grabbed Blueblood and tried to help him up, but he was understandably upset at her and pushed her off of him, getting up himself. The coffee had cooled since it spilt on him, so he was no longer in pain, but he was still angry.

"SURPRISE! WHAT IN THE WIDE WIDE WORLD OF EQUESTRIA ARE YOU DOING HERE?!" he screamed.

"I just wanted to visit," she said with an innocent smile on her face.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST RING THE DOORBELL?!"

"Because I knew you were asleep, silly," he giggled. "I didn't want to wake you."

Blueblood sighed and tried to calm himself down. Surprise was his former assistant, slash recent friend, slash long time stalker. "Surprise, we talked about this. You can't keep popping into my house whenever you want! I have a marefriend now!" He was referring, of course, to the Great and Powerful Trixie.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Surprise asked with a shrug.

"Well, if ponies see a mare who I'm not dating sneaking in and out of my house all the time, they'll start thinking things that aren't true. Do you know what I mean?"

Surprise thought for a few seconds. "Oh. OH! Oh, I see," the perky mare said with a blush and an embarrassed smile on her face. "Gotcha."

She was about to take off when Blueblood's recent conscience caught up with him. "Wait," he said. "Since you're here, you might as well stay… and clean up this mess you made while I go get cleaned up." He pointed over at the spilled coffee on the floor.

Surprise stopped and turned back to him. "Um, actually, I have to get to work. My boss says if I'm late one more time, they'll turn me into rainbows! I don't know if she was being serious or not, but either way, I don't want to risk it." Surprise flapped her wings and flew out the open window she had apparently come in through.

"Can't she just use the front door like normal ponies?" Blueblood muttered to himself, shaking his head.

Blueblood sighed and got ready to clean up the spilled coffee on the floor when he heard the doorbell ring. Blueblood wondered if it was Surprise again, finally learning to use the front door. He walked over to the door and opened it. He was surprised to find that it was in fact NOT Surprise. Instead, it was two royal unicorn guards.

"Hello?" Blueblood asked them, confused as to why they were there.

"Prince Blueblood?" asked one of them.

"Yes?"

"I'm afraid we have to place you under house arrest."

"WHAT?!" Blueblood shouted in shock. "On what charges?"

One of the guards levitated out a scroll and began to read it. "Destruction of private property, as well as, and I quote, being a self-centered, unprincely, royal pain," said the guard. "You allegedly damaged the Element of Generosity, Miss Rarity's dress at the Grand Galloping Gala and treated her badly the entire evening. Now she is suing you for damages, as well as for emotional distress."

"What!?" Blueblood exclaimed in disbelief. "But… But that was… a couple _years_ ago!"

"I'm sorry, your highness," said the guard, "but you will have to wear this for the time being." They levitated out a black collar from behind them that had wires and a small black box on it. They put the collar around Blueblood's neck, locking it with a key so that he couldn't get it off.

"This will shock you if you ever try to leave your house," said one of the guards. "It will also shock you if you attempt to remove it physically or with magic."

"Have a nice day," the other said. They bowed to the prince, and then turned and trotted away from Blueblood's property.

Blueblood still stood there in his doorway, completely befuddled by this unforeseen turn of events.

"What the heck just happened?!" he said to himself.

* * *

**Author's Note:**So this was the first chapter of my To Boldly Flee parody fic. What did you think? I will try to add chapters as fast as I can, if my job schedule allows it. So leave a review telling my your thoughts and opinions. Much appreciated.

Also, see if you can figure out the sci-fi references throughout the story.


	2. Chapter 1

Three days passed since Blueblood was placed under house arrest. Blueblood tried to pass the time in his house with what ever he could think of. Reading, eating, visits from some of his friends and girlfriend. He even tried cleaning to pass the time. No matter what he tried, however, he couldn't distract himself from the fact that he was board out of his mind. He thought to himself how ironic it was that usually he had no complaints about spending an entire day without leaving his mansion, but now that he couldn't leave it, he suddenly wanted to now more than ever.

One night, while he was asleep in bed, once again having the same dream as the previous nights, he was awoken by a loud noise. Blueblood sat up in bed, lighting up his horn to illuminate the room. He saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Then he heard another noise. It had come from downstairs, and it sounded like something made of glass had been shattered.

"Burglars!" Blueblood gasped to himself silently. He reached over to pick up his phone and dial 911, but when his hoof only met air, he then remembered that phones had not been invented yet in their universe somehow.

Blueblood frantically thought about what he should do. His first instinct was to simply lock the door to his room and hide under the covers. But then he remembered that he and his friends had stood up to and defeated King Sombra and Queen Chrysalis a year ago, and that he had learned to be brave that day. So Blueblood took a deep breath, and put on a determined expression.

The Prince climbed out of his bed and walked over to the door to his bedroom. Before opening the door, he thought that he should have a weapon to defend himself with. Doing a quick scan around his bedroom, he picked up a lamp with his magic and levitated it over next to him. Feeling ready, he took another deep breath, and opened his bedroom door.

Taking a peek out into the hallway and seeing no one, he silently crept out into the hallway and proceeded over to the staircase downstairs.

He heard more noises coming from down below. The sound of hooves across hard wooden floor.

Blueblood got to the staircase and started to head down it, being as silent as he possibly could on the wooden steps. He then noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the dark figure of a pony moving around in the foyer below him. Using his magic, Blueblood lit all the lights in the room, hoping to take the intruder by surprise so he could then knock them out with his lamp. As the entire room was illuminated with light, however, Blueblood was shocked to see that the intruder was none other than his great aunt, Princess Luna.

Princess Luna looked up at him in surprise, and Blueblood set his lamp down on the floor.

"Auntie Luna!" Blueblood exclaimed. "What are you doing here!?" Blueblood then noticed a broken vase lying in pieces on the floor beside the table it had been on, realizing that that must have been the sound he had heard earlier.

Luna suddenly flapped her big wings and flew up to where Blueblood was on the staircase, landing right in front of him and looking him in the eyes. Her eyes were wide and she had a crazed expression on her face.

"Blueblood!" she said, her voice filled with urgency. "Thou must help us! Take us home!"

To say the least, Blueblood was confused. "Auntie Luna… we _are_ home. _My_ home. Why did you break into my house? And in the middle of the night?"

"The middle of the night!?" said Luna, still acting weird. "Then perhaps there is still time! Search for my body, Blueblood! Find… the hole!"

Blueblood was taken aback, not sure what Luna was talking about. "Um… auntie Luna, there is no way I'm looking for your hole."

Luna continued. "The hole! It's coming!"

Blueblood was becoming disgusted. "Please stop talking about your coming hole, auntie."

Luna then put her front hoof on Blueblood's face. "Find it! Before Celestia finds out! She must not find out! I have to tell you... I don't have much time!"

Blueblood pushed his aunt's hoof off of his face. "I think you need a doctor, auntie Luna."

Suddenly Luna's eyes rolled back in her head as she began to fall forward. Blueblood let out a yelp as the larger pony collapsed on top of him, pining him down on the stairs.

"And now _I_ need a doctor too!" he grunted from underneath her.

* * *

Elsewhere in Equestria, at a small home in Ponyville, a yellow unicorn stallion named Comet Tail was looking up at the night sky with his telescope. On the couch in the room behind him, his friends, Pokey Pierce and Caramel were asleep on the couch. They had been at this all night.

Comet Tail mumbled to himself as he looked through his telescope, his eyes struggling to stay open from lack of sleep.

"I know I saw it last night!" he said to himself. "Oh, why didn't I write the coordinates down?"

He heard a yawn behind him and the sound of a pony stirring, but didn't bother looking up from his telescope to see who it was. Then he heard a groggy Pokey Pierce speak.

"Oh my gosh, Comet, are you still up? Would you give it a rest, man?"

"I know I saw it!" said Comet. "And _I_ want to be the one to say I discovered it!"

"You really need a marefriend, Comet," said Pokey. "You should just buck up the courage and ask her out already!"

"Who?" said Comet.

"You know who!" said Pokey. "That mare you've had a crush on since you first met her. I believe your exact words were 'our foals will be smart _and_ beautiful'." Pokey chuckled.

"You're one to talk," said Comet in annoyance. "You don't have a marefriend either."

"Hey, I'm still getting over the break up, okay!" snapped Pokey.

"Its been _six_ months! You're seriously not..." Comet suddenly cut off.

"Comet?" Pokey asked.

Comet Tail then suddenly jumped up from his telescope. "I FOUND IT!" he shouted gleefully. Turning around to face his friend. "I FOUND THE PHENOMENON!" Then he frowned as he noticed one of his friends was missing. "Hey! Where's Thunder Lane?"

"Oh," said Pokey. "He mentioned something about life being too short, and then left to go hook up with those two twin pegasus sisters. Cloudchaser and Flitter, I think their names are."

"Oh. Well anyway, I FOUND WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR!" Comet pointed over to the telescope.

Pokey sighed and walked over to the telescope while Comet got to work waking Caramel.

"CARAMEL! WAKE UP! I FOUND IT!"

Caramel groaned. "Unless you're a beautiful mare, I'm going back to sleep." Caramel turned over, trying to do just that.

Comet's horn glowed and he used his magic to roll Caramel off the couch.

"OW! HEY!" Caramel shouted as he hit the floor.

"Come on!" urged Comet. "Before it gets too light out, come over here and see my discovery!" Comet was almost giddy as he bounced back over to the telescope.

Caramel groaned as he got to his hooves and started heading over to the telescope with Comet and Pokey. "What happened to the good old days when we would just order a pizza and play Halo all night?" he complained.

"Well, what do you think?" Comet asked.

"What is that thing?" asked Pokey.

"I don't know," said Comet. "At first I thought it was a galaxy, but its way too small and too close to be that."

"Let me have a see!" said Caramel. Pokey backed off and Caramel put his eye to the opening. "I see it! Wow, that thing is weird! It looks like some sort of hole in space. Could it be a black hole?"

"No," Comet Tail shook his head. "Black holes are super dense collapsed stars that have such a powerful gravitational pull that even light can't escape from them, so we wouldn't even be able to see them. But this thing is clearly visible! Plus, it's to close to be a black hole."

"Where is it exactly?" asked Pokey.

Comet pushed Caramel out of the way and looked through the scope. "Well if I had to estimate, it appears to be near… Titan."

"Titan?" asked Caramel.

"Yeah. Its one of Saturn's moons," said Comet.

Caramel pushed Comet out of the way and looked through the telescope himself again. "Oh yeah, I see it." Then after a few seconds he said, "Hey, is it just me, or is that thing getting bigger?"

Comet pushed Caramel aside again and looked through the eyepiece. After a few moments he spoke. "You're right! That thing is expanding, slowly, but surely."

"Is that bad?" asked Pokey.

"Eventually it could be," said Comet, looking up from the telescope at his friend. "But I'd need more information on it before I can make an accurate hypothesis."

"You think we should tell somepony about this?" asked Caramel.

Comet thought for a moment. "Good idea."


	3. Chapter 2

The following morning, Blueblood had sent out for doctors to come to see Princess Luna, who had yet to wake up. Blueblood had managed to lay her on his sofa in his living room. The doctors that came however were not what Blueblood had been expecting. One was a turquoise unicorn mare named Dr. Lyra, and the other was a cream-colored earth pony mare named Dr. Bon Bon. They both seemed oddly familiar to him, like he had seen them both somewhere before. But they _said_ they were doctors, and they were _dressed_ like doctors, wearing white lab coats, glasses, stethoscopes, and carrying doctors' travel medical bags, so he let them examine his aunt.

Blueblood sat behind them on a chair and watched patiently as they looked Luna over.

After a little while, the two doctors turned away from Princess Luna to face Blueblood, who rose to his hooves as they addressed him.

"So is she going to be alright?" Blueblood asked the two doctors.

"Well, physically, Princess Luna seems to be completely normal," said Lyra.

Bon Bon let out a chuckle. "Well, all except for her backwards-"

"BON BON!" Lyra interrupted the other mare. "EXNAY!"

"Oh! Sorry," said Bon Bon, smiling sheepishly.

Lyra turned back to Blueblood. "The problem seems to be inside Luna's head," she continued.

"Her head?" said Blueblood. Then his eyes widened as he became worried. "Oh no! She's not turning into Nightmare Moon again, is she?"

"We don't know?" said Bon Bon with a shrug.

"We'll have to run more tests to be sure," added Lyra. Her horn glowed and she levitated Luna's unconscious body into the air.

"Don't worry. We'll take good care of the Princess," said Bon Bon. "Especially her backwards-"

"BON BON!" Lyra shouted at Bon Bon again, almost accidentally dropping Luna out of her levitation.

"Oops! My bad," Bon Bon apologized again.

Blueblood raised an eyebrow. "Are you _sure_ you two are doctors?" he asked.

"Of course," said Lyra, giving him a smile.

"What else would we be?" added Bon Bon.

Blueblood thought for a few seconds, and then shrugged. "Well, I can't argue with _that_ logic."

"Good," said Lyra. She and Bon Bon turned and headed out into the foyer with Luna levitated in the air above them, and walked out the front door.

Not five minutes passed before Blueblood heard his doorbell ring again. Thinking that perhaps those two doctors had forgot something, Blueblood walked over to his front door. Upon opening the door, however, he instead found a white unicorn mare with a purple mane and tail and eyelashes that were obviously fake.

"Hello, you pathetic excuse for a stallion," the mare said to him.

Blueblood was taken aback and narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Um… Do I know you?" he asked the mare.

The mare suddenly became very angry and glared daggers at him. "Don't you remember me?" she spat.

Blueblood thought for a moment. She _did_ look kind of familiar, but he couldn't quite put his hoof on it. He had met _so many_ ponies in his life after all. "Um…"

"ITS ME! RARITY!" the mare screamed. "WE MET AT THE GRAND GALLOPING GALA A FEW YEARS AGO! YOU TREATED ME LIKE CRAP! YOU RUINED MY DRESS! AND YOU MADE WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE BEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE THE WORST NIGHT OF MY LIFE!"

"Rarity?" said Blueblood. Then it all came back to him. He remembered the gala. He realized this was the mare that had gotten him under house arrest. He quickly became filled with anger. "You!"

Blueblood took a step forward towards the white mare, but then felt jolts of electricity run through his entire body and he let out a scream of surprise and pain. Remembering that he was still wearing the shock collar around his neck, he stepped back inside his doorway and the electric shock stopped. He then became aware of Rarity laughing.

"I can't tell you how satisfying this is!" Rarity said as she laughed.

Blueblood growled. "What do you want?" he demanded.

Rarity grinned. "Oh I just came by to see for myself that you were getting your comeuppance."

Blueblood groaned at the collar around his neck. "How long do I have to where this infernal thing?!" he pointed at the collar.

"At least until your day in court," said Rarity.

"And when is that?" asked Blueblood.

Rarity thought for a moment. "Um… last I checked, about… thirty years."

Blueblood's eyes widened in shock. "WHAT?! Why is it taking _THAT_ long?!"

Rarity frowned. "Apparently the courts didn't think the case was very important."

"THAT'S BECAUSE IT _ISN'T_ IMPORTANT!" Blueblood yelled at her.

"YES IT _IS_ IMPORTANT!" Rarity yelled back at him. "Rude ponies like you _NEED_ to be taught a lesson."

Blueblood rolled his eyes. He still couldn't believe this was happening to him. "Why are you even doing this?" he asked Rarity. "The gala was about three _years_ ago! Are you _seriously_ still upset about that? Can't you just… let it go?"

"OF COURSE NOT!" she shouted at him. "I'll _never_ let it go! Not until I have justice!"

"JUSTICE? Isn't _this_ enough?" He pointed back to the collar around his neck.

Rarity just chuckled. "Oh, I'm only getting started. By the time I'm through with you, you will regret every day you _EVER_ treated a lady like anything less than a Princess! I will-"

"Excuse me," Blueblood interrupted her, "but can you _legally_ do anything to me?"

Rarity was silent for a few seconds. "Well… not legally. No," she admitted.

Blueblood slammed the door in Rarity's face.

Blueblood turned and walked back to his living room, glad that he no longer had to put up with that nightmare of a mare. At least, for the moment anyway. Upon entering the living room, however, he nearly jumped out of his skin as he almost ran right into yet _another_ pony in his house.

"Hello, Blueblood old boy," said a brown earth pony stallion standing in his living room very casually, as if showing up in somepony's house completely unexpectedly was completely normal.

After Blueblood calmed down from his initial shock, he recognized the pony as Doctor Whooves.

"Doctor Whooves!?" exclaimed Blueblood. "What are you doing here? How did you get inside my house? Didn't you try to kill me last year?"

The Doctor responded. "This is about Princess Luna. I used my TARDIS to get in here. And yes. I would have gotten away with it to, if you and your friends had not accidentally resurrected King Sombra."

"Oh," said Blueblood, sighing. After just getting an unpleasant visit from that white marshmallow nightmare, he was in no mood for any more crazy stuff. But then it resonated in his mind that the Doctor had mentioned his auntie Luna's name. "Wait! Princess Luna? What do you want with her?"

"All in good time, Blueblood," said the Doctor cheerfully. "First, I need a cup of hot tea, and a plate of Jammie Dodgers."

Blueblood stared at the Doctor in bewilderment. "What?"

"Tea and Jammie Dodgers!" said the Doctor as he trotted past Blueblood and headed for the kitchen.

Blueblood stood where he was, dumfounded at what just happened. "Why is all this insanity happening to me all of a sudden!?" he asked himself out loud.

Several minutes later, Blueblood and the Doctor were sitting on the sofa in Blueblood's living room, the doctor with a cup of hot tea and a plate of Jammie Dodgers setting on the coffee table in front of them.

"Oh, that's lovely!" said the Doctor as he took a sip of his tea.

"Good," said Blueblood. "Now can you tell me what's going on?" He expected the Doctor to have a darn good reason for showing up in his home completely unannounced.

"Ah, yes," said the Doctor, setting his tea down on the coffee table and then turning to face the Prince. "I heard that Princess Luna was in your house last night."

"How did you know that?" asked Blueblood.

"I'm a Time Pony. I have my ways. Anyway, I was hoping to see her."

"Well you just missed her," said Blueblood. "Doctors came and took her away to get treatment not too long ago." Then he added, "Not doctors like you. I mean actual medical doctors."

"Yes. I got that," said the Doctor in annoyance.

"Anyway, I presume she's at a hospital or at the castle now," said Blueblood.

"Hmm," said the Doctor, nodding thoughtfully.

"What do you want with my aunt anyway?" asked Blueblood, curious.

"I don't know if you've noticed, Blueblood, but strange things are going on," said the Doctor, reaching down and picking up his tea in his hooves and taking another sip. "Cracks appearing in thin air, unicorns having odd dreams, and ponies behaving oddly! Well, odder than usual that is. I thought perhaps Princess Luna might be able to shed some light on it, but I want to be sure."

"What do you mean?" asked Blueblood, confused.

"I need to see inside your memories, Blueblood," said the Doctor, setting down his cup of tea again. "I need to perform a Time Pony mind meld with you. I need to see exactly what Princess Luna did and said while she was in your house last night."

Blueblood was taken aback. "You want to go inside my head?!" he asked the time pony.

The Doctor nodded. "Yes."

Blueblood thought for a moment. "Do I have to?" he asked.

"_Yes_!" said the Doctor, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

Blueblood sighed. "Okay. Fine. But… if you happen to see any erotic images of Braeburn Apple in there… just know that I honestly thought he was a mare."

The Doctor laughed. "Don't worry, Blueblood. We _all_ did!" Then he looked away for a moment, staring off into space. "We _all_ did."

Blueblood sighed again as he prepared himself. "Okay."

The Doctor put his hoof up to the side of Blueblood's head, and closed his eyes and concentrated.

After a few seconds Blueblood saw the memories of last night with princess Luna appear his thoughts. Every moment, from when he first awoke, to when Lyra and Bon Bon left with her.

When it was over, the Doctor removed his hoof from Bluebloods head. Blueblood looked at the Doctor, who with sitting with his hoof scratching his chin in thought.

"Interesting," the Time Pony muttered to himself.

"Did that help you?" Blueblood asked.

"It _did_ answer some of my questions," said the Doctor. "But it also raised even more questions. What is this 'hole' she's talking about? Why would her body be there? And what does Princess Celestia have to do with any of this? She seemed to really want to tell you something, but it looked like she was having trouble making coherent thought." He sighed. "Something's definitely not right, Blueblood. I sense a disturbance in the plot."

Blueblood blinked. "Oh! Um… Have you tried… Preparation H?" he asked.

The Doctor gave him a look. "NOT _THAT_ KIND OF PLOT, YOU MORON!" he shouted in annoyance. He then calmed himself. "The plot is… well, think of it as an unseen force. It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds our universe together. As a Time Pony, I can see the turn of the plot. What is fixed, what is in flux, what makes sense, and what is an anomaly. In a normal story, the plot should flow smoothly and make sense. But here… I have to go." The Doctor as he got up from the sofa.

"Wait! You're leaving?" asked Blueblood in surprise. "Just like that?"

"I'm sorry to leave so abruptly, Blueblood," said the Doctor. "There are things that need attending to."

Blueblood got up as well. "Doctor, I don't understand what's going on!"

"Nor do I, Blueblood," said the Doctor. Blueblood could hear worry in the Doctor's voice as he spoke. "I sense a great evil. I must confront it alone. But should I fail, it will fall to you and your friends to save the day in a suitably heroic fashion. Find Princess Luna. Listen to everything she has to say. Find out what she knows. All hope now lies in her."

The Doctor then whistled. A second later, Blueblood was startled as the Doctor's blue police box suddenly appeared out of thin air in the corner of the room, having apparently been cloaked there the whole time. The Doctor opened the door of the police box and walked inside, closing it behind him. The TARDIS then made its whining mechanical droning noise as it disappeared from the room.

Blueblood was left there, not sure what to think. The doctor had told him to find Princess Luna, but it was at that moment that Blueblood remembered he couldn't because he couldn't leave his house because of the collar around his neck.

"Oh well," Blueblood thought to himself.

* * *

Comet Tail walked back into his house, having just returned from the post office. Caramel and Pokey Pierce were raiding Comet's fridge and making themselves some daffodil sandwiches when he walked in.

"I sent a letter to the Canterlot Department of Science," said Comet. "I let them know about my discovery."

"You mean _our_ discovery, right?" asked Pokey.

"No. I mean _my_ discovery, seeing as I was the one who discovered it."

"But we were with you when you found it!" said Caramel.

"You were both sleeping on the couch!" said Comet. "Anyway, I hope they contact me soon about my discovery. At the rate the phenomenon is expanding, I imagine they will want to take immediate action. Who knows? I might even get an audience with the Princesses!" he said excitedly.

Just then there was a knock at the front door.

"Wow! I wasn't expecting them to respond _this_ quickly," said Comet.

"I really doubt it," said Pokey, rolling his eyes. "You just sent that letter a few minutes ago."

Comet walked over to the door and opened it. He was surprised when he found three royal guards, two pegasi, and one a unicorn, standing outside.

"Hello?" asked Comet.

"Hello," said the unicorn guard. Unlike most other unicorn guards, this one had a dark curled mustache, and a light blue fur coat. "I'm Captain Sharp Spear. Are you Comet Tail?"

Comet smiled. They had to be there because of his letter. Though how they had gotten it and read it in such a short amount he had no idea, but at the moment he didn't care.

"Yes. That's me!" he said. "You must be here about my discovery?"

"Indeed, we are," said Sharp Spear. "In the interest of the security of the Kingdom, I'm afraid you are all under arrest."

Comet blinked. Pokey and Caramel looked up from where they were in the house behind him, both of their mouths filled with sandwich.

"What? There must be some mistake!" said Comet.

"There's no mistake," said Sharp Spear. "I'm afraid you all just know a bit too much for your own good." His horn glowed with a violet aura as he levitated out several pairs of hoof cuffs from behind him.

Comet, Pokey, and Caramel gulped.


	4. Chapter 3

Later that day, Prince Blueblood heard a knock at his front door again. When he walked over and opened it, for the first time that day, he was actually pleased by who was standing there.

"Trixie! You're a sight for sore eyes," he said.

Trixie gave him a confused look. "Um… Did you forget it's our date night?" she asked.

It was Blueblood's turn to give her a confused look. "Trixie, how can we go on a date? I'm under house arrest, remember?" said Blueblood, pointing at the shock collar around his neck.

Trixie smiled. "That doesn't mean we can't still have date night here," she said Trixie as she walked around Blueblood into his house, giving him a quick kiss on the lips as she did.

Blueblood smiled. "I'm really glad you came by, Trixie," he said as he closed the front door behind him with his magic. "I have been having a really weird day so far. I could use someone to talk to."

"Oh? Tell Trixie about it," said Trixie.

So they walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa while Blueblood relayed everything that had happened to him since the previous night, from Princess Luna showing up in his house acting crazy, to that brief yet horrible visit from that purple maned, white marshmallow from Ponyville, and then the bizarre visit from Doctor Whooves, and his gibberish about something big and strange going on with Princess Luna and the fate of the world and stuff.

"Who knows what insane thing is going to happen next?" said Blueblood, and then he sighed. "I don't know how much more of this I can take."

"Well, to be honest, I have noticed some unusual things myself lately," said Trixie.

Blueblood looked at her with interest. "Like what?"

Trixie looked upwards in thought. "Well, a few days ago, I woke up one morning and all of the leaves on the trees in Equestria had changed color to brown and orange, and it was chillier than usual out, like it was late autumn, even though it's the middle of spring. And then the very next day, the trees and weather were back to normal. It was like the season had spontaneously changed from spring to autumn for a day. And the weirdest part was I seemed to be the only pony who noticed. When I asked other ponies about the sudden fall weather, they acted like they had no idea what I was talking about, saying that it _was_ autumn. And then the next day, when the weather and the leaves were back to normal, no pony remembered it had been like autumn the day before."

"Huh," said Blueblood. "That _IS_ weird!"

"Oh well," said Trixie, giving him a smile. "I know something you and I could do to take our minds off things." She gave him a suggestive look.

Blueblood grinned. "Yeah?"

Trixie nodded. "You can help me practice my magic." Her horn glowed as she levitated several spell books out of her saddlebags lying on the floor, and shoved them in Blueblood's face.

Blueblood frowned and sighed in disappointment. He took the books into his magic aura and levitating them down onto the table in front of him in a pile. "You are such a tease," he said to Trixie.

"Just open the green book there to chapter thirteen," said Trixie, getting up from the sofa to prepare to cast spells.

* * *

Princess Luna woke up and found herself staring at a sealing she didn't recognize. She was lying on her back on a bed, and it looked like she was in some bedroom, but not her own bedroom. This fact immediately caused her to start to panic.

"Ah. Your highness, you're awake."

Luna turned her head to her left and saw two mares in doctor's uniforms standing next to the bed she was lying on. One was a cream-colored earth pony, and the other was a turquoise unicorn.

"Who are you?" Luna demanded. "Where am I?"

"Relax, your highness," said the unicorn, apparently the one who had spoken before. "We're doctors. I'm Doctor Lyra. And this is Doctor Bon Bon."

"You're at our office in Ponyville," said the one named Dr Bon Bon.

Luna looked around the room she was in. The walls were a cream color, there was an open closet in which she could see a few hats and dresses, and a window to the outside with dark purple and violet curtains. The room actually looked more like a bedroom than a doctor's office, except for the giant computer looking machine and a table covered in various doctor's tools that is. Even the bed she was lying on wasn't a hospital bed, or an examination table. It was just a normal, pony sized, sleeping bed.

"Why am I here?" asked Luna, sitting up on the bed.

"Well, what do you remember from last night?" asked Dr Lyra.

Luna thought for a few seconds. "I was at the castle. I had dinner with my sister, and then I retired to my bed chambers and was setting down to go through some paperwork I had been neglecting, and then…" She paused. "I… I don't remember anything after that. The next thing I know, I'm waking up here."

"So you don't remember breaking in to your nephew Prince Blueblood's house in the middle of the night?" asked Dr Bon Bon.

Luna looked at them in shock. "WHAT?! I DID THAT?"

"Yes, your highness," said Bon Bon. "Prince Blueblood woke up and found you in his house in the middle of the night. He said you spoke to him briefly before passing out."

Luna still looked shocked, and a bit scared too. "I… I don't remember _any_ of that!"

"Well, we came and brought you here to give you a full examination," said Dr Lyra. "Don't worry, your highness. We'll figure out what's going on with you."

Luna narrowed her eyes at the two doctors. "You two look familiar?"

"We get that a lot," said Bon Bon.

Luna sighed. As skeptical as she was about the two doctors, the fact that she had been sleepwalking frightened her, and she wanted to get some answers. "Very well. You may proceed," she said.

The doctors brought over a big dome-like contraption that had wires attached to it that were connected to the large computer thing. They placed the dome part on top of Luna's head like a helmet and strapped it around under her muzzle, much to Luna's discomfort.

"Okay, Princess Luna. This device will read your subconscious and then display it on that screen," said Lyra. She pointed to a video screen on the large computer thing.

"Where did you get this machine?" Luna asked them. "I've never heard of anything like it."

"Oh, don't worry, your highness," said Lyra. "We stole it from Twilight's basement."

Luna's eyes widened. "THOU DID WHAT?"

"Don't worry. We'll put it back when we're done with it," said Bon Bon, like it was no big deal.

Luna's jaw dropped in disbelief at what she was hearing.

"And just so you're comfortable, we invited a few of your friends over here to help you feel more relaxed," said Lyra.

This brought a smile to Luna's face. Hopefully they meant Twilight and her friends.

Just then, the door to the room swung open, and standing there was a female griffon and a blueish-green pegasus mare with a blond mane and tail.

"Hey," the griffon said casually.

Luna frowned in confusion. "Who are they?" she asked the doctors. "I don't know either of them!"

"Yes, you do!" said the Pegasus. "I'm Lightning Dust, and she's Gilda! We saved Equestria from King Sombra and Queen Chrysalis when they returned! You were there when we received meddles for it!"

Luna had to think for a moment before it hit her. "Oh, right! Now I remember. But even so, neither of you are my friends."

"Well, to be honest," said Bon Bon, "when we said we invited a few of your friends, we actually just walked outside and asked the first two living things saw if they would help us."

Luna facehoofed.

"But we assumed you were friends with everypony," said Bon Bon, "seeing as you visit everypony in their dreams… apparently."

"Speaking of which," said Lyra. "I've been having nightmares for like a month now, and you still haven't visited me in my dreams. What gives?"

"Sorry, but the list is pretty full right now," said Luna annoyance. "Besides, I've been having these headaches and nightmares of my own, and blacking out and sleep walking happening to me lately! So, yeah, I've kind of got a lot on my plate at the moment."

Dr Bon Bon spoke up. "Alright, everypony! So just so we're all clear on how this will work, you two," she pointed at Gilda and Lightning Dust, "will ask the Princess a series of questions, and the machine will then read her subconscious thoughts, and display them on the screen in words. We'll begin with a few simple questions to make sure everything is working correctly." She looked at Lightning Dust. "Lightning, please begin with question one on the paper I gave you earlier."

Lightning Dust lifted up a small sheet of paper in her hoof. "Okay," she said. "Princess Luna, what are you thinking about right now?"

Luna glanced up towards the sealing in thought. "Um…"

Suddenly, the words 'Big Macintosh' appeared on the screen.

Luna's eyes widened when she saw what had appeared on the screen. "Wait a minute!" she exclaimed, a blush appearing on her face. "I never said that!"

"But your mind _did_, your highness," said Lyra with an amused grin.

"This is going to be juicy!" said Bon Bon with the same amused grin on her face.

Over on the other side of the room, Luna saw the griffon and the pegasus also looking amused. She growled in irritation.

"My mind did not think that!" Luna huffed defiantly.

Just then, the words 'Yes, it did' appeared on the screen.

Luna gritted her teeth. "The machine is a liar!" she spat angrily.

Then the words 'No, it isn't' appeared on the screen.

"YES YOU ARE!" Luna shouted at the computer.

Then Bon Bon spoke up. "Alright! Enough!" she said. "Now then, Princess Luna, why exactly… are you thinking about Big Macintosh right now?" Bon Bon asked with a grin.

"I am not!" Luna growled.

On the screen, the words, 'I am attracted to him' appeared.

"NO, I'M NOT!" shouted Luna, still blushing deeply.

"Why exactly are you attracted to him?" Bon Bon asked, clearly enjoying this.

"I THOUGHT THOSE TWO WERE THE ONES WHO WERE SUPPOSED TO ASK ME THE QUESTIONS!" Luna shouted, pointing at Gilda and Lightning Dust.

On the screen, the words, 'He's big, strong, handsome, brawny, burly, simple, kind, and I just want him to plow m-'

**"STOP!"** Luna screamed, using the deafening royal Canterlot voice, causing the four other ponies in the room to cringe and cover their ears at the loud noise and miss the end of the text on the screen.

"Ow! Okay! This is getting out of hoof!" shouted Lyra, giving Bon Bon a scowl.

"Yes. Sorry, your highness," said Bon Bon sheepishly. "I suppose I crossed a line there. Lets get back to the real questions, shall we?"

Luna crossed her hooves, rapidly loosing her patients. "Forgive me if I withhold my enthusiasm," she said.

Dr Lyra spoke. "Okay, your highness. I want you to try to remember when you broke into Prince Blueblood's house."

"I told you. I don't remember that at all!" said Luna.

"We know!" said Dr Lyra. "Just try, please."

Luna sighed and closed her eyes.

After a few seconds, the lights in the room suddenly began to flicker, and screen on the computer froze up.

"Um… okay. That's weird," said Bon Bon.

"Turn the computer off and then turn it back on again," said Lyra.

Bon Bon nodded and began working on the computer.

"Was that supposed to happen?" asked Luna in concern.

"Don't worry, your highness," said Lyra. "We just had a little hiccup there, but we're fixing it."

As soon as Dr Bon Bon turned away from the computer and gave Lyra a nod, Lyra looked at Lightning Dust. "Okay, ask her more of the questions on that paper."

Lightning Dust looked at the paper again. "Okay. What is your name?" she asked the Princess.

"My name is Luna," she answered, rolling her eyes.

On the computer screen, however, a very different name appeared. 'Starswirl the Bearded.'

Everyone stared at the screen in complete silence for a few moments. Then Luna let out a small chuckle.

"Heh. The machine must be glitching again, right?" she asked.

Bon Bon gave the machine a quick look over. "Actually, it appears to be working fine," she said.

"But… that can't be," Luna muttered in utter confusion.

"Ask the question again just to be sure!" said Lyra.

Lightning Dust nodded. "What's your name?" she asked again.

"Luna," said Luna.

Once again, the computer screen read 'Starswirl the Bearded'.

"Okay. This is getting spooky," said Gilda.

It wasn't any mystery as to why. It was common knowledge to all of them that the ancient and famous unicorn, Starswirl the Bearded, was dead. Lightning Dust and Gilda had personally witnessed his death when he had been murdered by King Sombra. They had even had a funeral for him in which they had cremated his body and launched his ashes into space. Nearly half of Equestria had attended.

"Ask a different question!" said Bon Bon.

Lightning Dust looked back at the paper she had. "Um… Why would you go see Prince Blueblood in the middle of the night?"

Luna didn't say anything this time. She just waited to see what would appear on the screen, like the rest of them.

The words, 'To give him a warning' appeared on the screen.

"Warning? What warning?" asked Gilda.

The lights began to flicker again and the screen froze up again. Lyra and Bon Bon started fixing it again.

"Why does it keep doing that?" asked Luna.

Dr Bon Bon shrugged. "Not sure. It could be because the computer isn't finding any subconscious readings from that particular question, or the machine is just glitchy."

"Okay. Go ahead and ask the next question on the list!" said Lyra as soon as they got done resetting the computer again.

"Princess Luna, where are you right now?" Lightning Dust asked.

"I'm obviously in this room with you," she said.

On the screen the words, 'Approximately 200,000 miles above Saturn's moon Titan, inside the hole' appeared.

"Titan?" said Bon Bon.

"Saturn's moon?" said Lyra.

"The hole? What hole?" asked Gilda.

Suddenly, the lights began to flicker again. Then something weird started happening on the computer screen. Instead of words appearing, images of what looked like space and bizarre calculations and charts began flashing on the screen, one after another.

"Okay. What the heck is this now?" asked Gilda.

"I don't know!" said Bon Bon, her and Lyra looking like they were on the verge of freaking out. "It looks like… star charts!"

"But the computer isn't designed for that!" said Lyra. "It's only supposed to show text! Not images!"

All of them looked over at Princess Luna, and it was a good thing they did to. At that moment, the Princess of the night suddenly wasn't looking so good. Her eyes had rolled back up in her head and her body was starting to shudder.

"Princess Luna? Are you okay?" asked Lyra.

Luna didn't respond, and she only seemed to get worse. The Princess was starting to convulse where she sat on the bed.

Lyra and Bon Bon began to panic.

"YOU TWO!" Bon Bon shouted at Gilda and Lightning Dust. "HOLD HER DOWN SO SHE DOESN'T HURT HERSELF!"

"TURN OFF THE COMPUTER!" said Lyra as Gilda and Lighting Dust started to try and hold the Princess down on the bed while she convulsed uncontrollably.

Dr Bon Bon tried to turn the computer off, but for some reason it didn't work. "ITS NOT WORKING!"

"QUICK! LETS GET THAT HELMET OFF OF HER!" Lyra shouted.

They tried to remove the helmet, but it wouldn't come off. Both doctors pulled as hard as they could on the helmet, but it stayed held fast to the Princess's head.

"Its no use!" exclaimed Bon Bon. "I think it's being held down onto her head by her own magic!"

"So what do we do?" asked Lyra.

"I don't know!"

On the screen, the images continued to appear one by one, getting faster and faster, until it finally stopped on one image. It was of some sort of swirling vortex in space, with a view of Saturn and its moon, Titan, behind it in the background.

Lyra spoke. "Princess Luna, is _this_ the hole you were talking about?" She pointed at the image on the monitor.

The image then cut away and a singe word appeared on the screen. 'Yes'.

At that moment, the computer screen exploded. Everyone in the room leaped backwards in surprise, and Luna suddenly stopped convulsing and collapsed on the bed, unconscious again.

Lightning Dust and Gilda let go of Luna, now that she was no longer convulsing.

"Wow!" said Gilda. "And I thought today was gonna be boring!"

Lyra and Bon Bon rushed to Luna's side and began looking her over. They could safely remove the helmet on her head now, and they threw it off her and let it clang onto the floor.

"Is she okay?" asked Lightning Dust.

"She's unconscious again," said Lyra, "but seems to be stable."

"Okay, so can either of you tell us what the heck just happened?!" asked Gilda.

Before either Lyra or Bon Bon could answer, they all heard a loud bang behind them, like a door had been knocked down. They all spun around and looked out the bedroom doorway to see royal guards were inside the building.

"FREEZE, CRIMINAL SCUM!" shouted one of the guards as they rushed into the room they were in. There were a bunch of them, some of them pegasi guards, and some of them unicorn guards.

"Hey! What the hay is the meaning of this?!" shouted Bon Bon at the guards.

Then one guard, a unicorn guard with a blue coat and a black curled mustache, stepped forward. Judging by the difference of his armor, they guessed he was a ranking officer. "You are all under arrest for the kidnapping of Princess Luna!" he said to them in a sharp, smug tone.

"Kidnapping!?" exclaimed Gilda. She and Lightning Dust looked at the two doctors.

"We didn't kidnap the Princess!" said Lyra. "We're doctors! The Princess is ill, and we are trying to treat her!" She pointed over at Princess Luna lying unconscious on the bed.

The guard raised his eyebrow. "Doctors? You two aren't doctors."

"Yes, we are!" shouted Bon Bon. "See our lab jackets and our stethoscopes? We are clearly doctors!"

"No. You're just-" The ranking guard was suddenly interrupted when there was a bright flash of light beside them in the room, along with the sound of electrical sparks.

Everyone in the room squinted as their eyes adjusted to the light. When they looked at where the light was coming from, they saw a stream of bright light floating in mid air beside them, bending here and there in a zigzag pattern, like a lightning bolt.

They all stared awestruck at it.

"WHAT IS THAT?!" shouted Lightning Dust.

No one answered. Suddenly, the… thing… gave off another bright flash of light, and then it was gone.

All of them looked around the room, but the thing, what ever it was, was no where to be seen, like it had never been their at all.

However, they did notice that something was different. Dr Lyra and Dr Bon Bon were no longer dressed in their doctor clothes.

"What are you all doing in my house!?" Bon Bon shrieked suddenly, she and Lyra looking around at all the ponies in the room, their eyes widening when they fell upon Princess Luna lying unconscious in the bed. "Why is Princess Luna on my bed!?"

Gilda and Lightning Dust also noticed that Bon Bon's voice was different now too. Where before it had been light and singsong, it was now kind of deep and nasally. Gilda and Lightning Dust looked at each other in confusion and then looked back at the two mares.

"You brought us here, remember?" Gilda said to them. "You were treating Princess Luna because she's not right in the head?"

"Why in Equestria would we do that?!" said Lyra.

"Because you're doctors?!" said Lightning Dust.

"We're not doctors!" said Bon Bon.

"Yeah. What gave you a silly idea like that?!" said Lyra.

Gilda's and Lightning Dust's jaws dropped as they stared at the two mares in disbelief.

"BUT YOU SAID YOU _WERE_ DOCTORS!" exclaimed Gilda.

"I never said that!" said Bon Bon.

"Me neither," said Lyra.

"YES, YOU DID!" Gilda and Lightning Dust both shouted.

On the other side of the room, the lead unicorn guard was rubbing his chin with his hoof in thought as he watched the argument before him. He then turned to the other guards that were in the room.

"Arrest them all!" he ordered. "They've all learned far too much. And get Princess Luna to safety. Princess Celestia will want to know she's safe."

"Yes, sir!" The guards saluted him and then stormed forward to arrest the three mares and griffon in the room.

* * *

"Okay. Are you ready?" Trixie asked Blueblood, levitating an open spell book out in front of her.

Blueblood whimpered where he stood. "Why do _I_ have to this?" he whined

"Because I need an assistant to test my magic on, and as my coltfriend, that's your job," said Trixie. "Now hold still!"

Blueblood scowled. "I don't remember reading _THAT_ in the job discrp-"

"I SAID HOLD STILL!" snapped Trixie.

Blueblood froze. "Yes dear."

Trixie smiled and closed her eyes to start concentrating on the spell.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light beside them along with the sound of electrical sparks. Blueblood glanced out of the corner of his eyes and saw a stream of bright light floating in mid air beside them, bending here and there in a zigzag pattern.

"Amazing!" Blueblood said to Trixie in high regard, who was also staring at the beam of light hanging in the air. "I didn't even see your horn glow!"

Trixie looked at Blueblood with wide-eyed expression. "Um… I… I didn't do that," she said, pointing at the strange light.

"What?!" said Blueblood in confusion. "But then… how did…?" They both turned their eyes back to the strange streak of light hanging in midair, and then they both instantly felt an overwhelming amount of fear wash over them.

* * *

Surprise was at her cloud house, lying on her bed in her room, reading a new book she had gotten from the library. The Hunger Games. At the halfway point through the book, she angrily slammed the book shut and through it to the floor, which since her floor was made of clouds, the book just fell right through it.

"Well that was really disappointing!" she huffed. "And here I thought a book called Hunger Games would be about an eating contest! And here I find out its actually about children killing each other! I haven't been this disappointed in a book since I found out The Last Unicorn wasn't about a post-apocalyptic Equestria in which all ponies, except one, had been turned into zombies. What a jip!"

Suddenly there was a knock at her front door. Surprise looked up in surprise.

"Wow! I never get visitors!" she said to herself excitedly. "Coming!" she shouted. She got up from her bed and trotted happily over to the door.

"Hello?" she said as she opened it, instantly putting on one of her biggest smiles. But then her smile faded when she saw exactly WHO was at the door. "Oh no! Not again!" she screamed in terror.

Surprise tried to slam the door shut, but it was blocked by a pitch-black hoof with holes in it.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Here's the next chapter. Sorry this one took so long. I'll try to do better. So please tell me what you think so far.


	5. Chapter 4

Blueblood and Trixie stared at the glowing streak of light just hanging there in mid air in Blueblood's living room. It looked like a… crack. Just a giant crack in nothing! Blueblood suddenly remembered all the reports he had heard about ponies seeing cracks in thin air, and what Doctor Whooves had told him. He had just thought it was all rubbish, but now, with this right before his eyes, he was starting to think that maybe the reports were actually true.

"It looks like a… crack," said Trixie, apparently agreeing with him. "A crack in… nothing!"

Blueblood and Trixie dropped their things and began backing away from the strange phenomenon.

"What is it?" asked Blueblood.

Trixie looked at him. "You're asking me!?" she said.

Suddenly there was another flash of light. When the light faded, the thing was gone, but then Trixie and Blueblood immediately noticed something _else_ weird. They were now in a completely different building. They looked around themselves at the room they were standing in. They were still in a fancy living room of what appeared to be a big fancy mansion, but it was a different one.

"Where are we?" asked Trixie.

Blueblood went to a window and looked out. To his utter surprise, he saw his yard and his neighbors' homes right where they normally would be from his house.

"We're… still in the same place," he said in confusion.

"What!?" said Trixie, equally confused. She came over to the window with Blueblood and looked out. "How the heck is that possible?"

They stood there for a few moments, trying to figure this out.

Blueblood looked at Trixie. "Trixie, go outside and see what things look like from out there."

"Hey! Why don't _you_?" demanded Trixie.

Blueblood simply pointed up at the shock collar around his neck.

"Oh. Right," said Trixie.

Trixie walked out of the room they were in, Blueblood following behind her. Glancing around the place, they could see that most of Blueblood's belongings still seemed to be here, pictures, furniture, antiquities, and appliances.

They quickly found the foyer of this building and Trixie opened up the front door with her magic and looked outside. It still looked like the front view of Blueblood's house. Trixie walked outside onto the walkway to the front gates of Blueblood's land, and looked back behind her at the building. She saw a completely different mansion, exactly where Blueblood's should have been. Not only did it have a different design, but where Blueblood's had been white, this one was a tan color. It was still an impressive mansion though. Just a different one.

"Well?" Blueblood called from the doorway.

Trixie looked at him. "We're still right where we were before. Your house has changed though. Its completely different."

"How bad is it?" he asked, sounding nervous.

"Its still a nice mansion," she shouted. "Just different." Trixie walked back to the front doors where Blueblood was standing, looking utterly confused.

"How, and why, would something just turn my mansion into a different mansion?" he asked.

Trixie shrugged. "I don't know. There are only a handful of ponies out there that could be powerful enough to do something like that with magic." Then she frowned. "Sparkle being one of them."

Blueblood remembered the streak of light that had appeared in his house only minutes ago. He wasn't so sure it was a pony that had done this.

"Well, I've had enough!" Blueblood shouted, turning and stomping back into the mansion.

"What are you doing?" asked Trixie curiously as she followed him in, closing the front door behind her with her magic.

Blueblood's horn glowed with light blue light as he walked back into the living room. "I'm bringing in some help!"

Trixie then noticed movement in the room. A side table drawer on one of the tables holding a lamp in the room suddenly opened up, and something came levitating out from inside it. It was some sort of small device, with a few buttons on it. Blueblood levitated the device over to him and, using his magic, he pressed one of the buttons on the device, which then made a beep sound.

* * *

Far away from Canterlot, out in the country, the twin unicorn brothers, Flim and Flam, were hard at work on their new, but still relatively small, apple orchard. They were planting another young apple tree in the ground. So far, their orchard was pitiful. They only had about twenty apple trees so far, and most of them weren't fully grown yet. Needless to say, their business was coming along very slowly.

Flim dropped the shovel he had been using to plant the tree out of his magical hold and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his front leg. He looked over at his brother, who was levitating a bucket of water to pour on the recently planted tree.

"Whoever said hard work pays off was clearly an idiot!" Flim complained. "We've been doing this for a year now, and this is how far we've gotten! We're not producing nearly enough cider to compete with other apple cider businesses!"

"I know," said Flam as he poured the bucket of water onto the small apple tree. "But what else can we do? They agreed to drop the charges against us as long as we agreed to stop trying to swindle other ponies out of their apple orchards."

Flim let out a long moan. "AT THIS RATE, WE'RE NEVER GOING TO BECOME RICH SELLING CIDER!"

"Well, at least it can't get any worse," said Flam.

Suddenly, in two bright flashes of light, they were both teleported away against their will.

* * *

Gilda and Lightning Dust were in a dungeon cell with Lyra, Bon Bon, Comet, Pokey, and Caramel, when the two of them were suddenly teleported out of the cell.

"Hey! Where did those two go?" asked Pokey.

"And why didn't they take _US_ with them!?" moaned Lyra.

* * *

A few miles away in Canterlot, Jet Set and Upper Crust were at a garden party in Fancy Pants' backyard at his estate when in two flashes of light, they were suddenly teleported away, leaving everypony at the party who had seen them vanish with stunned expressions.

"Did you see that?!" said Fleur to her husband, Fancy Pants.

"I say!" exclaimed Fancy Pants. "I didn't know those two could perform a teleportation spell!"

* * *

High up in the clouds, the three Cloudsdale pegasus jocks, Dumbbell, Hoops, and Score, were racing each other in the sky.

"Come on, you slow pokes!" Dumbbell shouted as flew out ahead of his two best friends, doing a barrel roll to evade an incoming cloud. "If we want to learn to do a sonic rainboom, we're gonna have to get a lot faster!"

"BET I'LL DO ONE BEFORE YOU!" Hoops shouted as he suddenly folded his wings and dived down towards the ground below.

"HOOPS, STOP! YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH ALTITUDE YET!" Score shouted at his friend in concern, but Hoops either didn't listen, or couldn't hear him.

Suddenly, all three ponies were teleported out of the air in three bright flashes of light.

* * *

Blueblood and Trixie waited, and then after a few seconds, there were several bright flashes of light before them, and then Gilda, Lightning Dust, Flim, Flam, Jet Set, Upper Crust, Dumbbell, Hoops, Score, and Surprise, all appeared in the room with surprised expressions on their faces. Hoops, who had been in the middle of a sky dive when he had been teleported, crashed into the carpeted floor head first, and crashed through the floor down into the basement, leaving a large, gaping hole right in the middle of the living room. Everyone immediately turned and looked down into the hole with concern.

"I'm… all… right," they heard Hoops' weak voice call up from the hole in the floor.

They all then continued looking around at their new surroundings, and each other, with utter confusion, until their eyes fell upon Blueblood and Trixie, who, unlike everyone else in the room, did not look at all confused to be there.

"Hello, everyone," said Blueblood. Trixie also gave them all a small wave with her hoof.

"_Blueblood_!? _Trixie_!?" they all exclaimed.

"Huh?" Hoops suddenly climbed up out of the hole in the floor and stood with the others, a bit wobbly and holding his head with his hoof. He then noticed Blueblood and Trixie and the others in the room as well. "Oh hey, guysh," he said, his voice a bit slurred. "What'sh up?"

"How did we get here?!" Jet Set asked Blueblood and Trixie.

"Yeah. How _did_ you do that?" Trixie asked Blueblood.

"Oh. I used this teleporting device," said Blueblood, holding up the small device he had used for them to see. "I got it so I could teleport you all here incase of an emergency."

Everyone in the room except Blueblood groaned.

Then Blueblood suddenly noticed that one of his friends was missing. "Hey! Wait a minute! Where's Iron Will? He was supposed to be here to!"

They all looked around for the large minotaur, but he wasn't among them.

"Hey. What's this?" Flim picked up a piece of paper off of the floor. "It has Iron Will's name on it."

"What's it say?" asked Blueblood.

Flim cleared his throat. "It says, 'Blueblood, I can't make it to another one of your hair-brained schemes today. My daughter's school play is today and I promised I'd be there. Sighed, Iron Will.'"

* * *

Meanwhile, in Minotaur country, a bunch of minotaurs were inside a school auditorium, watching a school play.

"Hamlet? Hamlet? Where art thou, Hamlet?" a young female minotaur calf on the stage called out.

"Juliet!" said a young male minotaur as he walked onto the stage from backstage. "You're time is up, and your parole has begun! You know what that means?"

Just then, Iron Will spoke up from the audience. "Kids, I just want to tell you right now, you are not sucking me into this story at all. I am very much aware right now that I'm watching a play." Then he noticed every other minotaur in the auditorium staring at him in shock. "What? I'm just trying to give these kids some helpful criticism!" he said.

Just then, Iron Will's daughter began crying and ran off the stage.

"MAYBELLE, GET BACK HERE!" shouted Iron Will. "WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT BEING A DOORMAT?"

* * *

"Well, I guess Iron Will is out," said Blueblood disappointedly.

"Out on what?" asked Gilda. "You still haven't explained anything to us yet! What are we doing this time? Invading a micro-nation?"

"NO!" countered Blueblood. "Now, I'm sure you've all noticed the strange stuff that's been going on lately."

"You're gonna have to be more specific," said Dumbbell. "This is Equestria. Weird is pretty much par for the course around here."

The rest of them all nodded in agreement.

Blueblood sighed. "I mean the weirder than usual stuff that's been going on lately," he said. "It's been reported in the news papers, and on the radio."

"You mean like ponies saying they've seen 'cracks' of light in thin air appearing and disappearing in different places?" asked Upper Crust.

"And certain unicorns getting weird dreams and head aches?" said Flam.

"And things disappearing and showing up other places?" asked Score.

"And ponies acting strange?" said Lightning Dust. "Well, stranger than usual?"

"Exactly," said Blueblood. "Well, unfortunately, it turns out its all true. And it's only getting worse! One of those 'cracks' just showed up in my house! And when it was gone-"

"Hold on!" said Gilda. "_You_ saw one of those things too?!" Gilda and Lightning Dust suddenly look very interested.

"Um… yes," said Blueblood. "Wait! _YOU_ saw one of them?"

"Heck, yeah!" said Lightning Dust. "We were with these two doctors, Lyra and Bon Bon, while they were examining Princess Luna, and then-"

"You were with my aunt Luna?!" Blueblood asked.

"Yeah," said Lightning Dust.

"How is she?" Blueblood asked with concern.

"Oh, yeah," said Gilda. "They did say Luna had broke into your house the other night." This got a lot of shocked and intrigued looks from the rest of the ponies in the room who didn't know anything about this yet. Gilda continued. "Well, Blueblood, your aunt is… well… there is something definitely weird going on with her."

Blueblood's expression fell.

Gilda and Lightning Dust then explained about the computer test that looked into Luna's head, and how it said stuff about Starswirl the Bearded, holes in space around Saturn's moon, Titan, and a warning. And then they said that Princess Luna had started convulsing and fell unconscious.

Blueblood felt deep-rooted worry for his aunt.

"Starswirl the Bearded?" asked Trixie with intrigue.

Gilda and Lightning Dust nodded.

"Anyway," said Lightning Dust, "after all that, some royal guards showed up and accused us of kidnapping the Princess. And then one of those 'cracks' appeared in thin air, and when it was gone, those two doctors had completely forgotten about being doctors!"

"And then we were all arrested and thrown in the dungeons," said Gilda.

Lightning Dust nodded. "If you hadn't teleported us out of there, we'd still be rotting with those losers!"

Blueblood tried to put his worry for his aunt aside and put his hoof to his chin in thought, considering everything he had just heard. "The Doctor _did_ say that auntie Luna had something to do with this," he muttered.

"What are you talking about?" asked Lightning Dust.

So Blueblood explained to them all about his visit from the Doctor, and everything he had said to him about Princess Luna, about the 'cracks' and something about something not being right with time and space, and about some great evil being afoot.

"And also," continued Blueblood, "as I was saying earlier, before I was so _rudely_ interrupted," he shot Gilda and Lightning Dust a glare, which they just rolled their eyes too, "one of those 'cracks' _also_ appeared in my house before I brought you all here! And when it was gone, my house had been replaced with _this_ one!" He gestured to the room around them.

The others except for Trixie all looked confused when he said this.

"What do you mean?" said Upper Crust. "This _is_ your house!"

Blueblood and Trixie looked at each other, both of them equally confused by this statement, and then looked back at Upper Crust.

"No, it isn't!" said Blueblood. "My house is completely different from this one. Come now, you've all been in my home before. I mean, _sure_, its still a mansion, but it's a _different_ mansion!"

"This looks like your regular home to me," said Flam. The others all nodded in agreement with him.

Blueblood and Trixie looked at each other again.

"They don't notice that it's a different house, but you and I do," whispered Blueblood.

"Just like when I was the only pony who noticed the trees change color," whispered Trixie.

"But how is that possible?" Blueblood asked.

"I don't know," whispered Trixie. "But lets not worry about it right now. We can figure it out later."

Blueblood nodded, and they turned back to the others. "Well, okay. Whatever," he said to them. "The point is, I don't know what's going on, but I am getting sick and tired of all this bizarre craziness that is happening, and I want it to stop! Now, I know I've never asked anything of you guys before…"

Everyone except Blueblood looked at each other in disbelief.

"Did he _realy_ just say that?" asked Dumbbell.

"But we need to come together and make things right," said Blueblood, pretending he hadn't heard Dumbbell's remark. Now Princess Luna is somehow a big part in all this." He looked at Gilda and Lightning Dust. "Do you know where she is?"

They shook their heads.

"No," said Gilda. "When they took us to the dungeons, they took Luna somewhere else. We have no idea where she is now."

"Darn," cursed Blueblood. "Well then, I think we should go tell my aunt, Princess Celestia, what's going on. She'll know what to do."

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea," said Gilda.

"Me either," said Lighting Dust.

Everyone stared at them in confusion.

"Why not?" asked Blueblood.

Those guards that arrested us, they were Princess Celestia's guards," said Lightning Dust.

"So," said Blueblood. "They arrested you because they thought you had kidnapped Princess Luna. Once we get that all cleared up-"

"We don't think that was really the reason they arrested us," said Gilda.

Everyone still stared at them in confusion.

"What are you talking about?" asked Blueblood.

"Right before they arrested us, we heard one of the guards say something about that we knew too much," said Gilda.

"Yeah. And while we were in the dungeon, we met some other ponies who said they had been arrested because the guards said they 'knew too much' too," said Lightning Dust. "Those ponies also knew about a hole in outer space near Titan. Whatever is going on, it seems like somepony doesn't want anypony else to know about it for some reason."

"And you think it's my aunt, Princess Celestia?!" accused Blueblood angrily. "Why would she do that? She's the most honest, caring, wisest, and greatest pony there is!"

"I don't know!" said Lightning Dust. "But they _were_ her guards, and given what we've seen, I don't want to risk ending up back in the dungeons."

"Me either," said Gilda. "So lets just not involve her for right now, just to be safe."

As much as Blueblood wanted to protest against what they were saying about his great aunt, and Princess of Equestria, Princess Luna's last words she had said to him suddenly bubbled up inside his mind again. 'Find it! Before Celestia finds out! She must not find out! I have to tell you… I don't have much time!'

"Fine," Blueblood reluctantly agreed, but then he thought to himself, _I'll just have to _prove_ my great aunt's innocents in all this_. "Then what are we going to do?"

Everyone started thinking for a few moments.

"Well, we should probably try to find out more about what's going on," said Trixie. "Because, at the moment, we know pretty much jack squat!"

"And how do we do that?" asked Jet Set.

"We need to find somepony else whose smart enough to possible know what's going on and give us some answers," said Trixie.

"Who in Equestria could possibly be smart enough to know what's going on?" asked Flam.

Hoops spoke. "Blueblood, you said Doctor Whooves visited you. Maybe he could give us more answers."

"Hey, that's actually a good idea, Hoops," said Dumbbell.

Blueblood frowned. "Actually, I don't know if he's coming back," he said. "He said he was going off to fight the 'great evil' by himself, and that if he fails, its up to us."

"Well, things aren't getting any better, so I guess he failed," said Flim.

"Okay, the Doctor's out of the question," said Dumbbell. "Any other idea's, anyone?"

They kept thinking.

"Wait a minute," said Trixie. She turned and looked at Blueblood. "Blueblood, where did you get that teleporting device? The one that brought them here!"

Blueblood smirked. "I stole it from Sparkle's basement," he said. "You would not believe the stuff she has down there. Its like… Nerdvana down there!"

"Oh," Trixie groaned.

"Well we can't ask _her_ for help," said Lightning Dust. "She's best friends with Celestia, and we already agreed we can't go to her for help."

"I doubt _she'd_ know what's up anyway," said Trixie.

"Okay. So no Doctor, no Celestia, and no Sparkle," said Upper Crust. "Is there _anypony_ else out there who might be bat-shit crazy enough to know what's going on?"

"HEY! What about Discord?" said Flim. "If any creature would know something, its him."

"Yeah! Discord!" agreed Flam.

"Only one problem," said Blueblood. "We have no idea where to find him. He could be anywhere!"

"Yeah," said Trixie. "And there's no guaranty he'd help us even if we _did_. Remember, he has this whole 'rule' about not solving ponies problems for them, because of something to do with the plot."

"Yeah, you're right," Flim said disappointedly.

Upper Crust moaned. "This is impossible! I can't think of anypony we could go to for help!"

"Well we _have_ to do _something_!" said Lightning Dust.

"Well…" began Blueblood.

Everyone looked at him.

"What is it?" asked Trixie.

Blueblood looked nervous. "Well… there is still _one_ pony who _might_ be able to help us," said Blueblood. "But you're not going to like who it is."

"Who?" everyone immediately demanded.

Blueblood paused and took a deep breath before he answered. "Nightmare Moon."

Everyone stared at Blueblood in silence.

"Nightmare Moon?" said Gilda with a chuckle. "You _do_ know she was just an alternate personality of Princess Luna's, don't you?"

"And that alternate personality was destroyed by the Elements of Harmony," said Jet Set. "Wasn't it?"

"Actually…" began Blueblood. "It turns out, when the Elements of Harmony were used against her back when she returned, they didn't destroy her. They _separated_ her from Princess Luna. Since then, Nightmare Moon has somehow obtained her own body, but she's still too weak to be a threat to anypony, so she's been allowed to live in isolation as long as she 'behaves'."

They all stared at Blueblood in complete silence again, looking even more bewildered then the last time.

"You're kidding," said Trixie.

"That… doesn't make much sense," said Gilda.

"Yeah, that sounds really farfetched," said Flim.

"It didn't make any sense to me either when I found out," said Blueblood, "but its true! Besides, look around!" He extended his hoof into the air to emphasis his point. "All sorts of stuff is happening that doesn't make any sense! That's why we're here, remember!"

"He's got a point," said Lightning Dust with a shrug.

"Okay," said Trixie. "So where is Nightmare Moon?"

Blueblood paused again. "In the same place she's been for the past couple years," he said. "Hiding in a cave in the Everfree Forest."

"Oh, not _that_ Faust-forsaken place again!" moaned Upper Crust.

"How do you know this?" Dumbbell asked Blueblood, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Being the nephew of the rulers of Equestria, I pick up on stuff," said Blueblood. "Apparently, they've been trying to reform her like they did with Discord, but so far she hasn't been swayed."

Everyone considered this for a few moments.

"So you really think Nightmare Moon might know what's going on?" asked Gilda.

Blueblood shrugged. "She might! She did used to be a part of Luna, after all."

"And you're sure she won't try to… kill us?" asked Score.

"Like I said. She's too weak to harm anypony anymore," said Blueblood. "Otherwise, why would she be hiding in a cave?"

"Good point."

"Alright," said Lightning Dust with a shrug. "I guess Moony's our best option so far. Lets go!"

"Hold on a second!" shot Upper Crust before Lightning Dust could flap her wings even once. "Do we really want to get involved in another one of Blueblood's plans again?" She looked at Blueblood. "No offense, Blueblood, but the thing about your plans is they… well, they never work out."

Blueblood glared at her. "Oh, come on!" he said. "When has a single one of my plans never worked out?"

Suddenly they heard the front door open and close, and then they heard hoof steps approaching. They turned around to face the entrance to the living room just as a light orange unicorn mare with a red and yellow mane and tail came walking into view. Blueblood recognized her as none other than Sunset Shimmer. She was levitating a familiar looking envelope beside her head.

She came into the room and looked at them all. "Hello," she said. "I'm here about some quest for a big reward, or something like that." She glanced at the envelope she was levitating beside her, and then back over at them. "Is this the right place?"

They all stared at her.

"What?" she asked, confused.

"That was a year ago!" exclaimed Blueblood.

Sunset's eyes widened. "Oh!" she said in surprise, and then looked down at the floor. "I should really start checking my mail more often."

"Who the heck is this?" said Trixie, her and everyone else turning to look at Blueblood.

"Oh, yes," said Blueblood. "Everypony, this is Sunset Shimmer." Then he looked at Sunset Shimmer. "Sunset, this is my marefriend, Trixie, and that's Gilda, Lightning Dust, Jet Set, his wife, Upper Crust, Flim, and his twin brother, Flam, Dumbbell, Hoops, Score, and Surprise."

"Hello," they all said to the Sunset.

"A pleasure," responded Sunset, then she looked at Blueblood. "So what's going on here?" she asked.

"Um…" began Blueblood, scratching the back of his head as he thought. Then he looked at the others. "Somepony fill her in?"

Gilda approached Sunset. "Okay, you're going to love this," she said sarcastically as she began to explain the situation to the new pony as quickly as she could.

Blueblood turned back to the others and got back to the topic at hoof. "Okay, so maybe my plans don't always turn out so great," he admitted. "And I know I've made a few mistakes in the past."

"Thousands!" said Lightning Dust.

"And sometimes I've led you into danger," said Blueblood.

"Always!" said Jet Set.

"But at least I had the best intentions in mind," said Blueblood.

"Your own!" said Dumbbell.

"And things have always turned out okay in the end."

"RARELY!" they all shouted in unison.

"But this isn't about me this time, okay!" said Blueblood. "This is about Princess Luna, and all this crazy stuff that is happening. This is about saving Equestria from… who knows what!? Please! I'm begging you! Just trust me one more time! Don't do it for me! Do it for Equestria!"

Everyone in the room was silent as they considered what Blueblood had said.

"Well I'm with you," said Trixie.

Blueblood smiled at her.

"We're in," said Gilda and Lightning Dust together.

"Count us in!" said Dumbbell. Hoops and Score nodded in agreement beside him.

"We're in too," said Flam, Flim nodding with him.

"I suppose I'll help too," said Sunset with a shrug. "I didn't have anything else planned for the weekend anyway. And isn't that just really sad?"

Jet Set and Upper Crust whispered to each other, until they looked at Blueblood and sighed.

"I suppose we'll help too," said Jet Set, "but only because we don't particularly like the idea of living in a world that's gone topsy-turvy."

Blueblood smiled. "That's the selfish spirit!" he said. Then he looked over at Surprise, who hadn't spoken yet. "What about you, Surprise? Are you in?"

Surprise gave them all a dark grin, most unlike her normal bubbly expression. "Oh, I'm definitely coming too," she said coldly. "I have to make sure you all get what you deserve in the end."

"Glad to have you!" said Blueblood happily, he and everyone else in the room completely oblivious to Surprise's unusual behavior. "Alright, what are we waiting for? Lets go see Nightmare Moon!" Blueblood turned and started heading out of the living room, towards the front doors. Everypony else followed behind.

Blueblood opened the front doors up with his magic and stepped outside… and then screamed as he was immediately shocked by the electric collar around his neck.

"GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Blueblood quickly leaped back inside his doorway, and took deep breaths after the electric shock stopped.

Behind him, his friends all couldn't help but burst out laughing.

Blueblood glared back at them angrily. "Well this is just perfect!" he growled. "I can't leave the house!"

"Why don't you just take that thing off?" asked Gilda, walking up to him.

Blueblood glared at her. "If it were that simple, don't you think I would have done that already?"

Gilda shrugged.

Blueblood sighed. "If I try to take it off, I'll be electrocut-"

Suddenly, Gilda hooked one of her claws underneath the collar, and then, in one clean motion, sliced right through it.

Blueblood winced, but was surprised when he felt no pain and saw the shock collar fall to the floor.

"There," said Gilda with an amused grin.

"What the…" stuttered Blueblood in amazement as he stared at the severed collar lying on the floor. "Those guards lied to me!"

"You're such a baby," said Gilda, rolling her eyes. "Can we go now?"

* * *

**Author's Note: **As always, tell me what you thought. Your comments help me write.


	6. Chapter 5

"So, the little ponies want _my_ help now, do they?" laughed Nightmare Moon.

Blueblood, Trixie, Lightning Dust, Gilda, Flim, Flam, Dumbbell, Hoops, Score, Jet Set, Upper Crust, Surprise, and Sunset Shimmer, stood before the mistress of darkness herself in her cave in the Everfree Forest, after having taken a train from Canterlot to Ponyville, and then Blueblood showing them where the cave was. The only light in the cave came from a few torches hanging from the walls, and the tiny sounds of bats squeaking and flapping their wings could be heard echoing throughout the cave.

In the dim light, they could see that Nightmare Moon was not her usual self. Her body was semi-transparent, like a ghost. They guessed this was because of how weak she was now. She had gained enough power to form a body for herself, but not completely.

Nightmare Moon continued. "But what makes you think I'll help any of you?"

"Nightmare Moon, you must have heard about the crazy stuff that's going on," said Blueblood. "If we don't do something, then… well… we don't know WHAT will happen! But cracks appearing in thin air, and random, crazy things happening all around us, it _definitely_ can't be good! "

"Precisely," said Nightmare. "Which will make it all the easier for me to finally bring about an eternal night!"

"You know, I've always wanted to ask you about that," said Blueblood suddenly, causing everyone to look at him. "How exactly would you bring about an eternal night anyway?"

"Wha… What do you mean?" said Nightmare Moon in confusion. "I would simply never let the sun rise."

"But the Earth is round," said Blueblood. "So one side of the Earth is always facing the sun at all times, no mater what. So its always daytime somewhere."

Nightmare thought for a moment. "Um…"

"You're right!" Trixie said to Blueblood. "And I suppose you could just make it eternal night here in Equestria only, but that would mean on the other side of the planet it would be eternal day."

"And that also means that everything on one side of the planet will soon freeze to death, while the other side of the planet will be burned to a crisp," said Sunset. "Or, I suppose to make it night time everywhere, you could, somehow, get rid of the sun all together, but that will still leave you with the problem of everything on the planet freezing to death."

"Plus, if there's no sunlight, all the plants will die, and then there will be no oxygen, and everyone will suffocate to death," added Trixie.

Sunset nodded.

Nightmare Moon stood there, wide-eyed, and frozen in a daze. "Huh," she said after several moments. "I guess I never really thought my plan through all the way."

"Wow. So all somepony had to do was just explain that to you?" said Trixie. "Why didn't anypony think of that when you first returned?"

"Can you imagine if somepony _had_?" said Flim. "Things would have turned out SO differently. For one thing, there would have been _no_ reason for the mane six to go find the Elements of Harmony, so they never would have become the Element Bearers, and… WOW!"

"If only. Am I right?" said Sunset, with a light chuckle.

Everybody looked at her. "Huh?" asked Blueblood.

"Nothing," she said dismissively.

"Uh, guys, I think we're getting a little off topic here," said Score as he pointed over at Nightmare Moon, who was looking at them all, impatiently.

"You know, you're all lucky I'm not as powerful as I once was," said Nightmare Moon. "Otherwise, you wouldn't still be alive."

"Oh! Right!" said Blueblood, turning back to face Nightmare Moon. "So will you help us?" he asked her.

Nightmare thought for a second. "I still don't see why I should," she said. "What do _I_ gain from it?"

"Well, you're in just as much danger to whatever's going on as the rest of us!" said Blueblood. "Who knows? You could spontaneously turn into a… _zebra_ for all you know! Or worse, a _mule_!"

Nightmare Moon thought to herself again. "Well, I certainly don't want to be a zebra, or a mule," she said thoughtfully. Then she sighed. "Very well. Fortunately for you, I do know something about what is going on."

The group felt their spirits lift.

"Awesome!" said Dumbbell. "So what's with all the weird stuff that's going on?"

Nightmare Moon turned away from them to face the wall of the cave. "What we're dealing with is unlike anything Equestria's ever faced before," she said. "Even Discord himself is powerless against a force such as this."

The group all became filled with dread.

"What is it?" asked Flim nervously.

Nightmare Moon turned back to face them dramatically. "A plot hole!" she said.

The group all looked at each other in confusion.

"A plot hole?" said Blueblood. "What's that?"

"It is a rip in the space-story arc continuum itself!" said Nightmare Moon. "An unnatural opening that is causing nothing but chaos, and warping our universe. You thought Discord was bad? What he did was NOTHING compared to what this thing is capable of!"

Nightmare Moon's horn glowed with a dark aura, and then a magical image was projected out of her horn before them all. The image looked like a swirling vortex in space.

Gilda and Lightning Dust immediately recognized it.

"That's what we saw back when we were with Princess Luna!" said Lightning Dust. "We saw the exact same thing on the computer thing that was… reading her mind… or something like that."

"Well, _this_ is the plot hole!" said Nightmare Moon. "Because of it, the rules and laws that bind our universe together are no longer applied! Right is wrong, and wrong is right. Up is down, and in is out. Absolutely _anything_ could happen! Anything that was once impossible, is now _quite_ possible, and it's only going to get worse!"

"How bad is it going to get?" asked Upper Crust.

"The plot hole is getting bigger," said Nightmare Moon. "The more it grows, the worse the chaos will become, and the more it will consume the universe. It is literally ripping our universe apart. If it isn't stopped, it will eventually destroy the entire universe!"

They all stared at Nightmare Moon, wide eyed.

"My gosh!" exclaimed Blueblood.

"Those 'cracks' that are appearing in thin air," said Trixie. "Is that being caused by the universe being torn apart by the plot hole?"

Nightmare Moon nodded. "Indeed."

"But how did this happen?!" exclaimed Blueblood. "What caused this plot hole?! I mean, it couldn't have just happened all on its own, could it have?"

"You're quite right, nephew," said Nightmare Moon. "It _didn't_ just appear on its own."

Blueblood cringed at Nightmare Moon calling him 'nephew'. "Then _what_ caused it?" he asked.

Nightmare Moon smirked. "An egg-headed mare."

Blueblood and the rest of them blinked. "What?" he asked.

Nightmare continued. "About a year or two ago, Twilight Sparkle used a time travel spell to travel back in time to herself and give herself a warning. However, it was that very warning that caused Twilight Sparkle to travel back in time to herself. This never-ending contradiction caused a time paradox. And this paradox caused such a strain on the space-story arc continuum, that it literally ripped a hole right through it. The plot hole!"

"So what your saying is… the universe is going to be destroyed, and its all Twilight Sparkle's fault?" said Trixie.

"Well… yes," said Nightmare Moon.

Trixie and Sunset both facehoofed.

"I don't know whether to laugh, or to cry," groaned Trixie.

"I know _exactly_ how you feel," said Sunset.

Nightmare Moon chuckled. "Yes. She _does_ make you just want to strangle her sometimes, doesn't she?"

"Nightmare," asked Blueblood, "why is it that some ponies notice the changes that happen, but other ponies don't?"

"Is this about your house again?" asked Upper Crust, rolling her eyes.

Nightmare Moon spoke, ignoring Upper Crust. "Those who don't notice the changes, or 'anomalies', created by the plot hole have also been affected by the anomaly themselves, at the same time. The only ones who will notice the anomalies are the ones who aren't affected along with them. Unfortunately, who's affected and who isn't seems to be completely random."

"So that explains why those two doctors didn't notice when they had stopped being doctors," said Lightning Dust.

Nightmare nodded. "Yes. And it also explains why no pony remembered who I was when I returned from the moon back in the first episode, even though there is apparently an entire holiday about me. Heck, there's a buckin' _statue_ of me just outside of Ponyville, for crying out loud!"

"But wait a minute!" said Score. "Didn't that all happen _before_ Twilight time traveled?"

"Oh, you stupid lesser ponies," said Nightmare. "You're not thinking fourth dimensionally! The plot hole is making changes in the future, present, AND the past as well. Think of it like… throwing a stone into a pond, and the ripples going out in all directions. The plot hole is like the stone, and its making ripples forwards _and_ backwards throughout time."

"Holy crap!" said Score.

"Yes," said Nightmare. "There could be anomalies all around us that we have no idea about. Things that we've accepted all our lives could very well be anomalies created by the plot hole. Even my very existence right now could be an anomaly!"

They were all silent for a few moments as they took this all in.

"Nightmare Moon, what is on the other side of the plot hole?" asked Blueblood.

"I don't know," she answered.

"Well, what does Princess Luna have to do with the plot hole?" asked Lightning Dust.

"I don't know that either," she said. "After I split from her body and got my own, I haven't had anything to do with her."

"Okay," said Blueblood. "Then _please_ tell us you know how to stop the plot hole."

Nightmare Moon shook her head. "Sorry. I haven't the slightest clue how to stop it. The plot hole isn't a force of _magic_. It is a force of _science_!"

The group hung their heads in despair.

"_Now_ what do we do?" groaned Gilda.

"I don't know," sighed Blueblood. He could feel himself loosing hope.

After a few seconds, Hoops suddenly spoke. "Maybe… Maybe Princess Luna knows a way to close the plot hole," he said. "Maybe that's what she was trying to tell you that night she was in your house!"

Blueblood and the rest of them all looked at Hoops in shock.

"Hoops, I never thought I'd say this, but you're a genius!" said Blueblood.

Hoops smiled proudly to himself.

"But we told you before," Gilda spoke up. "We don't know where Princess Luna _is_!"

"Wouldn't it make sense that she's at the castle with her sister?" said Upper Crust.

"They didn't take her to the castle," said Lightning Dust. "When the guards arrested us, they took _us_ to the castle dungeons, but they didn't take the Princess to the castle. In fact, they didn't even take the Princess to Canterlot! When they dragged us out of Ponyville, they carried the Princess off in a different direction. Towards the mountains, I think."

"The mountains?" said Flim. "Why in Equestria would they take her there?"

"We don't know," said Gilda.

They looked at Nightmare Moon, hoping for an answer.

She simply shrugged.

"Why didn't you mention this before?!" Blueblood said to Gilda and Lightning Dust.

"We didn't know it was important!" said Lightning Dust.

"Well, the Princess could be anywhere, and we don't have time to go on a wild goose chaise!" said Blueblood. "What are we going to do?"

The group began to hang their heads again, loosing hope.

After a long moment of silence, Flam spoke. "If the plot hole was created by science," he said, "could there be a scientific way to close it?" he asked.

"_Maybe_," Sunset said with a shrug, uncertain. "Scientific law states that anything that can be created can _also_ be un-created."

They all looked at Nightmare moon expectantly.

She shrugged too. "It _might_ be possible," she said.

"But even if we knew a way to close it, we can't even _get_ to the plot hole!" said Jet Set. "Its in outer space!"

"If only we could build a spaceship," said Hoops.

They all rolled their eyes at the large orange pegasus.

"Yeah, that would be _great_, Hoops," said Dumbbell. "To bad we can't!"

"Oh, I don't know about that," said Nightmare Moon thoughtfully. "You could always just steel the stuff you need from Twilight Sparkle's basement."

They all looked at each other.

"Could… Could that actually _work_?" asked Trixie.

* * *

A few hours later, Spike was walking down into Twilight's basement with a basket of dirty laundry in his claws, going to put it in the wash. When he got halfway down the steps, he saw something that made him drop the laundry basket in shock.

"HOLY GUACAMOLE!" he shouted.

Everything was gone! All of Twilight's gizmos, gadgets, computers, machines, chemicals, potions, lab equipment, notes, and some books, were all gone, leaving the basement relatively empty. Even the miniature air hockey table was gone.

Spike began to panic. "Oh man! Twilight is _really_ going to kill me this time!"


	7. Chapter 6

"Make sure all the walls are reinforced so that they are air tight!" ordered Trixie. "Remember, there's no air in space!"

Back at Blueblood's home in Canterlot, after the group had 'barrowed' the supplies they needed from Twilight's basement to attempt to construct a craft that could actually get them to space, they had gotten to work on constructing it. Realizing that they needed quite a big hull to hold them all, they ultimately decided to do the most awesome thing ever, as Lightning Dust had put it. They were turning Blueblood's mansion itself into a space ship. Blueblood didn't mind this that much, since he knew that this house wasn't _really_ his house, thanks to an anomaly created by the plot hole.

Personally, he was more concerned with making sure the ship was safe enough for him to fly in. He still would have preferred to go to see Celestia about their predicament, but since the question as to whether or not Celestia would have them all throne in the dungeons was still up in the air, and since there was absolutely nothing else they could do to possibly protect themselves from the destruction of the entire universe, he couldn't think of anything else they could do aside from the plan they had, even if the idea of going into space _did_ frighten him.

Even with Twilight's notes and books to help them, the work wasn't easy. They had to attach two, big rocket thrusters onto the sides of the house, set up the various computers and machines they would need all through out the house and connect them all with long wires and cords running through the hallways, reinforce all the walls and windows with spells to make them strong enough to hold together in the vacuum of space, and convert Blueblood's living room into a command bridge, and his basement into an engineering room.

They even fixed the hole in the floor that Hoops had accidently made when Blueblood had teleported them to his home.

It took them the entire rest of the day and the entire night, and it didn't help with Hoops, Dumbbell, and Score occasionally goofing off, or Blueblood, Jet Set, and Upper Crust occasionally slacking off, or Gilda, Lightning Dust, Trixie and Sunset occasionally at each others' throats when things got frustrating, or Surprise acting strangely more cryptic and secluded than usual, but when they were finally finished the next morning, they stood in Blueblood's living room slash bridge, and admired their work.

In the center of the room was the captain's chair, converted from a fancy armchair Blueblood had. And in front of it were two twin stations, one for the pilot, and one for a co-pilot. Both of these stations had the living room sofa behind them for the two pilots to sit on. Around the sides of the room were various other computer stations for other ship's systems. And at the front of the room was a large view screen, covering up the spot where a large picture window had once been.

"I can't believe it," said Gilda. "We actually turned a house into a space ship. I was _not_ expecting to do that this weekend."

"I still don't think this will work," said Upper Crust.

"Well, there's only one way to find out," said Trixie. "Lets get ready to launch."

"Wait!" said Flam. "What should we _name_ the ship?"

"That's right!" said Flim. "We need a name!"

"Okay, lets think up a name," said Blueblood.

"How about… the Enterprise!" said Hoops.

"NO!" the rest of them all shouted at him.

Hoops frowned. "Aw, why?"

"Because there have literally been a _billion_ Enterprises!" said Blueblood. "Come now! Think up something more original!"

"How about… the Providence!" said Jet Set.

"The Bounty!" said Flam.

"The Crusher!" said Dumbbell.

"The Victory!" said Lightning Dust.

"The Demon!" said Sunset Shimmer.

"Your coffin," said Surprise darkly.

"The Great and Powerful Trixie!" said Trixie.

Lightning Dust glared at Trixie. "We're not naming the ship after _YOU_!" she yelled at the blue unicorn.

"How about…" said Gilda, still thinking to herself. Then she grinned. "The Defiant, after all of us! We're all pretty defiant."

"The Defiant…" Blueblood ran the name over in his head. Then he smiled too. "I love it! What do you all think?" he looked at the others.

One by one, they all nodded their heads in agreement.

"Sounds good," said Trixie.

"Okay. The Defiant it is!" Blueblood sat down in the captain's chair. He had to admit, as afraid as he was to go into space, he was looking forward to being the captain of his own space ship. Kind of like a childhood daydream come true. "Ah, yes," he said giddily. "With a ship in my command, and a crew to dispose of-"

"Don't you mean 'At your disposal'?" asked Trixie, raising an eyebrow at Blueblood.

"Whatever," said Blueblood, then he continued. "Nothing can stop us!"

"Blueblood, aren't you forgetting something?" said Flam.

Blueblood looked over at him and the others, who were still standing where they had been. "What?"

"We have to charge the ship's power core first," said Flam.

Blueblood frowned as he remembered this inconvenience. "Oh. Right."

They walked down to the engineering room. In the middle of the room was a large glass sphere with wires attached to it spreading out all across the floor into the walls, as well as to a couple computers around the room.

"The power core is powered by magic," explained Flim, "Much like our Super Speedy Cider Squeezy is, except this one we stole from Sparkle is much more advanced."

"All the unicorns will have to combine their magic in order to charge it," Flam said. "It will take a few minutes to charge all the way up."

"Then lets get started!" said Trixie, stepping forward. "Unicorns ready?"

Blueblood, Flim, Flam, Jet Set, Upper Crust, and Sunset Shimmer all gathered around the power core along with Trixie. Dumbbell, Hoops, Score, Lightning Dust, Gilda, and Surprise stood back and watched.

"Now!" said Trixie.

The unicorns all pointed their horns at the core and began pumping magic into them. Then they each shot a continuous blast of magic into the machine.

The power core began to glow and pulsate with multicolored light as it was powered up by the several unicorns' magic.

"It's working!" grunted Flam as he continued to focus his magic on the machine.

Suddenly, they all heard the faint sound of someone knocking at the front door upstairs.

"Somepony see who that is!" said Blueblood, straining from the effort of outputting his magic.

Gilda walked over to a window and looked out. "Aw, crap!" she said, sounding worried. "It's a bunch of royal guards, including that one… _prick_!"

"But we're not finished powering up yet!" exclaimed Blueblood. "Somepony stall them!"

"I'll deal with them," said Surprise suddenly.

They looked at her in surprise. "You will?"

"Yeah," she said, smiling. "You all just stay here."

Blueblood shrugged. "Okay. Good luck."

* * *

Up outside the front door, Captain Sharp Spear banged on the front door again with his hooves.

"Well, they aren't answering," he said after a few minutes, putting his hoof down. Then he looked over his shoulder at his squad of guards. "Knock the doors down and storm the place! Capture them all!"

"Yes, sir," the guards nodded to him and prepared to buck the doors down.

Right at that moment, the front doors suddenly swung open, and the guards were shocked to see Princess Celestia standing there before them in the doorway.

"Princess!?" exclaimed Sharp Spear.

"Is there a problem here, gentlemen?" Celestia asked.

"N-no, your highness," said Sharp Spear. "I wasn't aware that you were here!"

"Well, I'm here," she said. "And I assure you, everything is fine here. You may all leave."

Sharp Spear hesitated. "But your highness, I-"

"I said leave!" Celestia snapped at them impatiently.

"Y-yes, your highness," said Sharp Spear. He and the other guards bowed their heads, and then turned to walk away, each of them looking utterly confused.

Princess Celestia closed the doors as they left.

* * *

Back down in the basement, the unicorns were still charging the power core with their magic… and they were all getting exhausted. They heard hoofsteps coming down the stares and glanced over to see Surprise trotting back down.

"I got rid of them," she said.

"You did?!" grunted Blueblood while he continued to focus on powering the ships power core. He was in just as much surprise as everyone else at what Surprise had said.

"Yeah," Surprise said.

"How?" he asked.

Surprise grinned. "A lady never reveals her secrets."

"Oh," grunted Blueblood. "Well, good job, Surprise."

Suddenly there was a ding sound, like the sound of an oven timer going off.

"Stop powering the machine!" ordered Flam. "The core is fully charged!"

Indeed, the large, glass sphere was now glowing brightly with the colors of each of their magic.

"Finally!" Upper Crust sighed as she and the rest of the unicorns stopped putting out magic, and collapsed to the floor in exhaustion.

"Oh, come on! That didn't look that hard!" Lightning Dust scolded them for how they were acting.

Trixie, Blueblood, Sunset, Flim, Flam, Upper Crust, and Jet Set all glared at her in annoyance.

"You don't know what its like to have magic!" said Trixie in aggravation. "Using it drains our energy!"

Lightning Dust rolled her eyes. "Whatever."

"I think I'm gonna throw up," groaned Upper Crust, suddenly finding the energy to get up and gallop up the stares to the bathroom.

"Okay," grunted Blueblood, wearily getting to his hooves. "Are we ready to go now?"

"We should be now," said Flim as he and the rest of the unicorns also started getting up off the floor and shaking off their tiredness.

"If it works, that is," added Flam.

"Good," Blueblood said. "Everypony to your stations!"

They all walked back upstairs to the living room, except for Flim and Flam, who it was decided would be in charge of the engineering room. Blueblood flopped back down in the captain's chair, and Dumbbell sat down in the pilot's seat, with Hoops sitting down next to him as his co-pilot.

"Hey, why is Dumbbell the pilot?" asked Lightning Dust.

"Because he, Hoops, and Score play video games a lot," said Blueblood with a shrug. "So I would guess that would make them good pilots."

"Its like that movie 'The Last Starfighter'," said Hoops. "Ever seen it?"

"Yeah," said Lightning Dust, "and it was an hour and a half of my life that I will never get back." Then she looked back at Blueblood. "And who says _you_ get to be captain?"

"One, I'm a Prince! Two, its my house, so that makes me Captain! Three, leadership is my special talent! At least… I'm pretty sure it is." He looked down at his compass rose cutiemark. "Honestly, I've never been all that sure what my cutiemark means, but I'm fairly certain it means leadership."

"_Wonderful_," Lightning Dust said sarcastically.

The rest of them all got to different computer stations all around the room.

"Preflight check?" ordered Blueblood.

Trixie replied. "Power core is online, shield generator is ready, inertial dampeners, artificial gravity, and life support are all working. All systems appear to be good to go!"

"That's 'All systems appear to be good to go, _CAPTAIN_'," Blueblood said.

She glared at him in annoyance. "I'm not calling you that."

"You have to!" said Blueblood. "_I'm_ the Capt-"

"Uh oh!" Jet Set interrupted their argument from over at the radar screen. "I think those royal guards from before are back!"

"What!?" said Blueblood. "Let me see! On screen!"

Jet Set pressed a button on his control panel, and then the view screen turned on and showed them the image of the front yard. Captain Sharp Spear and several of his unicorn guards were standing out there, and they looked mad.

They could see Sharp Spear say something to his guards, and then they all pointed their horns at the house/ship.

Blueblood started to panic. "Blast! Somepony _do_ something!" he shouted.

"I'm activating the shield generator!" said Trixie suddenly.

On the view screen, they saw a wall of magical energy suddenly appear between them and the royal guards. And just in time too, because at that moment the guard's horns glowed, and they shot out magical blasts at the ship, which struck the magical force field with small explosions.

"Whoa! Way to think quick, Trixie!" said Score, letting out a sigh of relief.

Blueblood however knew that even their ship's artificial shield spell wouldn't keep out Celestia's unicorn guards forever. There was only one way out of this.

Up.

"Well, it looks like its time to find out if this ship really works or not!" Blueblood said, taking a deep breath. "Dumbbell, lets go!"

"Right," said Dumbbell, also taking a deep breath. "Here goes nothing. Firing rocket thrusters!" He pushed a lever forward on his control panel.

They felt a sharp jolt as the rockets outside fired, and the entire building began to shake. The loud noise of the rockets filled their ears. On the view screen, they could see the royal guards backing away as they got a blast of rocket exhaust in their faces.

"Guys, this is totally insane!" said Gilda, stating what they were all thinking.

_Come on! Please work!_ Blueblood thought to himself as the entire building shook.

As they kept watching the view screen, they could see the ground starting to lower away from them as their ship began to lift up into the air.

They all smiled hopefully.

"It's working!" exclaimed Hoops.

"WHAT'S GOING ON!" screamed Upper Crust as she suddenly ran into the room.

"We're taking off!" shouted Jet Set over the noise of the rockets.

"HOLY BUCK! WE ARE?!" she screamed, looking at the view screen. "I DON'T BELIEVE IT!" she gasped.

"I don't believe it either!" shouted Gilda in amazement. "This hunk of junk is actually working!"

Their house ship lifted higher and higher into the air.

"Dumbbell," Blueblood began, gulping nervously. "Take us up into space!"

"You got it," said Dumbbell, actually sounding excited. "Everypony hold on!" He put his hoof on the maneuvering pad on the control panel, and pointed the ship up towards the sky. He put more power into the rocket thrusters, and their ships continued to fly faster up towards space.

"All systems are still looking good," said Trixie.

Just then, the ship began to shake more violently and the image on their view screen became blindingly bright.

"OH MY GOSH! WHAT'S HAPPENING?" Upper Crust screamed, in a flash, jumping over to where her husband was and wrapping her hooves around him.

"I think we're passing through the atmosphere!" shouted Sunset over the noise. "We should put more power into the shields!"

"Doing it!" Trixie shouted over at her computer station.

The ship continued to shake and rattle as it moved through the atmosphere!

_Come on! Hold together,_ Blueblood prayed.

Finally, the shaking and the loud rocket noise stopped as they passed out of the atmosphere. The bright light on the view screen faded and the image of millions of tiny twinkling lights in a vast blackness filled the screen.

They all gazed at the view screen in awe. The sight was truly something to take in.

"Wow!" gasped Blueblood. "That's quite a sight!"

"I can't believe it!" said Gilda. "We're actually in space!"

"Its beautiful!" said Trixie.

Indeed it was beautiful. They had all seen the night sky before, but viewing the cosmos way up here in space itself was something else entirely.

"Guys!" Score said to Dumbbell and Hoops. "You realize we're flying higher than any pegasus has ever flown before?"

"Awesome!" Dumbbell and Hoops cheered together. Lightning Dust also grinned at that.

Suddenly, Upper Crust put her hoof to her stomach. "I don't feel so good," said Upper Crust, before galloping off back to the bathroom as fast as she could.

"Wow, she must have a weak stomach," said Hoops.

"She does," said Jet Set. "But actually, she's been getting sick a lot lately. We think she's caught a stomach bug or something."

Blueblood held down an intercom button on the armrest of his captain's chair. "Flim, Flam, are you two seeing this down there?"

Flam's voice responded on a speaker in the room. "You mean the beautiful starry vacuum of space? You bet we see it."

As they continued to stare out at the vastness of space, just then a white flash of light went streaking by on the screen.

"What the blazes was that!?" asked Blueblood.

Jet Set looked back at his radar screen. "There's something approaching us from behind!" he exclaimed in a frightened voice. "It's _enormous_! And it's shooting at us!"

"WHAT?!" everyone exclaimed at the same time.

"On screen!" Blueblood ordered.

The image on the view screen changed to show the view behind their ship. They could see the gigantic blue sphere that was Earth looming there behind them, and in front of it, there was indeed _something_ approaching them.

Whatever it was, it was definitely odd looking. It was white in color, and shaped like a giant oval, or perhaps a more teardrop shaped ring, with the rounded front of the object drawing to a forked point at the back. And on the inside of this giant ring, connected to the rounded front, was another giant ring shaped structure, this one glowing with a bright white magical energy.

And it was massive! So massive that, compared to it, their ship, the Defiant, looked the size of a small Lego piece.

"What the heck _is_ that thing!?" asked Sunset.

"I think it's a ship!" said Gilda as she looked at the image with squinted eyes.

As it got closer to them, they could all see that it was indeed another space ship. They could just make out the tiny glints of windows, two cylindrical twin thrusters jutting out the back, and on its hull they could see the words 'HMS Ascendancy' written in large, bold letters.

"Another space ship?!" exclaimed Surprise, actually expressing some emotion for the first time since they had gathered.

"Where the heck did _this_ one come from?" asked Sunset.

The unknown ship shot another beam of white light out of a large circular opening at the front of its hull. It once again missed the Defiant, but it had been a lot closer then the last one.

"WHY ARE THEY FIRING AT US!" screamed Blueblood.

"GET US OUT OF HERE!" Trixie shouted at Dumbbell and Hoops.

"Uh… right!" Dumbbell stuttered back as he and Hoops began working together to fly their ship away from the attacking ship.

Their ship swerved in a different direction and began speeding away as fast as it could. The attacking ship sped after them, continuing to fire its energy weapon at them.

A few moments later, one of the attacking ship's energy blasts grazed their ship's shield bubble, sending their ship spinning out of control.

All of them screamed as they were hurled to the floor by the jolt of the impact.

Dumbbell quickly pulled himself up from the floor to the helm controls, fighting against the centrifugal force, and attempted to get them back under control. After several seconds, their ship stopped spinning, and they were all able to get back up off the floor.

"Everypony alright?" Blueblood shouted.

They all told him they were.

"I'm okay, but our shields are down!" said Trixie, back at her computer station, staring at the screen. "One more hit like that, and we're dead!"

"Well, it looks like they've stopped shooting at us," said Score, pointing at the view screen, "for now, at least."

They all looked at the view screen. The pursuing ship had in fact ceased firing at them, and was now only looming nearby.

"Well, that's a relief!" said Blueblood.

"Yeah, but _why_ did they stop?" said Lightning Dust.

Before anyone could make a guess, Upper Crust suddenly came galloping back into the room. "What the heck just happened!?" she shouted, a panicked look on her face.

Jet Set pointed at the image of the ship on the view screen. "Another ship came out of nowhere and attacked us!" he said.

Sunset spoke up. "The attacking ship is sending us a video transmission!"

_Good. Now we can see who or what was attacking us,_ Blueblood thought to himself. "Put them on."

The view screen changed to the image of what they guessed was the bridge of the attacking ship. And they were all shocked by who they saw standing on that bridge.

"Hello, Prince Blueballs," Shining Armor said with a cocky smirk on his face.

"Shining Armor!?" Blueblood gasped. Then he got an angry expression and growled. "Hey! I told you to stop calling me that! I'll have you know I happen to have a marefriend now!" He used his magic to pull a startled Trixie over next to him so Shining Armor could see her. "See?"

"Whatever," said Shining Armor with a roll of his eyes.

"Hey! Is that Blueblood?" a female voice from somewhere off screen on the other ship suddenly spoke up, startling Shining Armor. "I told you _I_ wanted to speak to him _MYSELF_!"

Suddenly none other than Rarity ran onto the screen, shoving Shining Armor out of her way.

Rarity panted in exhaustion. "This ship's too big!" she said. "If I had walked, this fanfic would be over!"

"_YOU_!" Blueblood shouted at her.

Rarity righted herself. "So, Blueblood, you remember me. Good! That will make my ultimate vengeance all the sweeter!"

"Charity!" Blueblood growled.

Rarity's face became red with rage. "IT'S _RARITY_, YOU IDIOT!" she screamed. "FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! MY NAME IS _NOT_ THAT HARD TO REMEMBER!"

"How… where… what are you doing on a space ship?!" stammered Trixie.

"Oh that," said Rarity. "Princess Celestia had them built."

"Princess Celestia!?" said Blueblood, shocked. He could just hear Gilda and Lightning Dust saying 'I told you so'.

"Yes," said Rarity. "They're absolutely amazing, aren't they?"

"And how do _you_ have a space ship?" asked Shining Armor as he walked back into frame and stood next to Rarity. He didn't look happy.

"Oh…" Blueblood wasn't too keen to tell them how they had gotten the parts to build the Defiant. "Well… um…"

"Forget it," Shining interrupted. "We already know you stole the part you used to make it from my sister."

_Darn it_, Blueblood thought. He let out a sigh. "Okay, so maybe we did, but we had a really good reason. There's a giant rip out there in space that's going to destroy the universe! It's called a plot hole. We're trying to stop it! We should be working _together_!"

"Well, that's very thoughtful of you," said Rarity. "But we can't let you do that! The plot hole has to stay open!"

"What!?" exclaimed Blueblood in disbelief. "Are you insane? Why?!"

"That's none of your business!" snapped Shining Armor.

"I'm sorry," said Rarity, "but we have to take you all back to Earth and lock you up for a little while. Its for your own good."

They all stared at Rarity and Shining Armor in disbelief. Nothing they were saying made any sense.

"Hey, there's no way I'm going back to jail again!" shouted Gilda angrily. "Especially since I haven't done anything wrong… well… recently, anyway… sort of."

"Me either!" said Lightning Dust.

"Surrender and allow us to teleport you over to our ship," said Shining Armor, "or else we'll have no choice but to use force! Its your choice." The image on the view screen changed back to the view of the other ship.

"Told you Celestia had something to do with this," Gilda said to Blueblood.

Blueblood glared at her. "But this doesn't make any sense! Why would my aunt Celestia, and the Element Bearers, _not_ want to also stop the plot hole? They're the biggest goody two shoes in the entire world!"

They all looked at each other, shrugging, none of them able to come up with an answer.

"Everypony!" said Jet Set, looking worried at his computer screen. "I think that other ship is getting ready to fire its weapon again."

They all looked at the image of the ship on the view screen. The circular opening on the front of the ship was beginning to glow with white light.

"What do we do!?" squeaked Upper Crust.

Blueblood had no idea what to do. They couldn't outrun it, they had no weapons they could fight back with, and their shields were down. They were sitting ducks!

Suddenly Trixie shouted, "Hoops! Push the red button!"

Everyone looked at Trixie.

"What red button?" asked Hoops.

"THE BIG RED BUTTON IN FRONT OF YOU ON THE HELM CONTROLS! PUSH IT NOW!"

Hoops looked in front of him at his control panel and saw the big red button Trixie was talking about. He slammed his hoof down on it.

They all suddenly felt very strange, like their bodies were being stretched and twisted in every direction, except they felt no pain. A split second later, they, and their entire ship, suddenly disappeared in a blink of an eye. And just in time too, because at that instant, the other ship fired its beam weapon at the spot where their ship had just been.

* * *

In another part of space, a giant baseball suddenly appeared out of no where, and it then began to rapidly transform into a train, and then a flowerpot, and then a sperm whale, and then finally it became the house ship, Defiant.

On board the ship, the crew were all becoming aware of a fascinating discovery. They had all somehow been turned into dragons!

Blueblood, Trixie, Gilda, Lightning Dust, Hoops, Dumbbell, Score, Jet Set, Upper Crust, Sunset, and Surprise all stared down at their new dragon bodies, shocked.

"Holy crap! We're dragons!" said Hoops as he looked at his new sharp claws where blunt hooves had once been, and hard scales where soft fur had used to be.

"It must be because of the improbability drive," said Trixie, feeling the new sharp pointed teeth with her fingers in her new beak-like snout.

"The _what_ drive?" asked Blueblood as he stared back at his new long lizard tail, flexing it in fascination.

"The improbability drive," repeated Trixie, now looking back at her new leathery, bat-like wings, flapping them out of curiosity. "Apparently, it can be used for quick getaways, except you never know where you'll end up, or what you'll be when you get there."

"Are we stuck this way?" asked Upper Crust, biting her claws worriedly. She did not want to be a dragon for the rest of her life, even if she _did_ have wings now.

"No," said Trixie. "We should change back to normal once we reach one hundred percent normality again. At least, that's what it said in the instructions."

"Huh," said Gilda. "So is this kind of stuff gonna happen every time we push that button?" she asked.

"Very probably," said Trixie. "Yes."

Suddenly, Flim and Flam's image came up on the view screen. They were also dragons, and they looked panicked.

"Guys! Why are we dragons?" Flim asked.

"We used the improbability drive," said Trixie.

"Oh." The Flim Flam brothers relaxed, apparently also knowing about it.

Just then, Hoops pointed at Blueblood. "Hey, look at Blueblood!" he shouted.

"What about me?" Blueblood asked, confused. He looked over himself, but he saw no big difference between him and everyone else on board. He was just as much a dragon as the rest of them.

Hoops continued, an amused smirk on his face. "You're a blue eyes white dragon!"

Blueblood rolled his eyes and snorted, causing a puff of smoke to come out of each of his nostrils.

Just then, they all felt that same strange stretching feeling again, and then, in a blink of an eye, they were all suddenly ponies again, except for Gilda, who of course was a griffon again.

"I'm _ME_ again!" Upper Crust squealed happily as she hugged her soft equine self.

"We have normality!" Flam announced on the view screen.

Blueblood let out a sigh of relief, but then something occurred to him. "So where are we, anyway?"

"Let me check," said Flim. He walked out of view on the view screen. He came back a few moments later, a shocked expression on his face. "We're about three light years away from Earth."

Their jaws all dropped.

"That's really _really_ far, isn't it?" asked Hoops.

"Well, we better start heading back," said Blueblood, groaning to himself. "Its gonna take us a while to reach the plot hole now. So lets get going."

"At least we'll have plenty of time to think up a plan," said Sunset.

Lightning Dust groaned. "This sucks," she complained.

* * *

**Author's Note:** What a twist! Am I right? Please leave a comment. Do you like the story so far, or not? Have a question? Remark? Constructive criticize? All comments are welcome. I just want to know what you all think. Until next time then.


	8. Chapter 7

Prince Blueblood had no clue where he was, or how he had gotten there. Wherever he was, it was very dark and vast and empty, except for tiny twinkling lights all around him. It looked like he was in space, but that was impossible. If he was out in the vacuum of space, he'd be dead.

He tried to look down at himself, but he couldn't see his body. In fact, he just realized with a start that he couldn't _feel_ his own body.

"Hello?" he called out. "Is anypony there?" It was only after he had said that that he realized just how odd it was that he could hear his voice even though there's supposed to be no sound in space. Not to mention the fact that he didn't have a body, and therefore, no mouth.

Just then, Blueblood noticed a bright light out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look in the direction it was, and gasped at what he saw. It looked like a giant vortex of some sort, floating not to far away from him in space. Blueblood would have thought his first reaction would be fear. He was surprised to find that he oddly did not feel afraid at all. The giant swirling vortex looming so near to him gave him no fear at all. For some reason, it just didn't seem threatening to him, and he had no idea why.

He had the strangest sense that he had seen this thing somewhere before.

"Prince Blueblood!"

Blueblood was startled by a sudden deep and booming voice. He looked around for the source of the voice, but could see nothing but stars and the vortex around him.

The voice boomed again. "Prince Blueblood! Come into the plot hole!"

The plot hole! That was what the thing in front of him was. He knew he had seen it somewhere before. He could also tell now that the unknown voice was coming from the plot hole itself.

_Wait! Come into it?_ He thought to himself.

The voice spoke again from the plot hole. "Come into the plot hole, Prince Blueblood, and discover your destiny!"

"My destiny?" asked Blueblood, both in curiosity, as well as fear.

Suddenly, Blueblood noticed something glimmer inside the plot hole. He peered into the giant vortex as something came into view on the other side. His eyes, if he had any, became as wide as dinner plates when he could finally make out what it was.

It was his cutiemark. His compass rose cutiemark was floating on the other side of the plot hole, glowing brightly with what he could only describe as divine light. There was no mistake.

Blueblood suddenly felt drawn to the plot hole. He had to get in there! He had to know what his destiny was, and achieve it! He didn't know how, but he somehow willed himself to start moving towards the massive vortex before him.

The voice continued to talk to him as he glided towards the opening. "Blueblood. Blueblood. Blueblood."

Closer and closer he got to the plot hole. Closer and closer he got towards his destiny.

"Blueblood. Blueblood. Blueblood."

Suddenly, the plot hole started moving away from Blueblood, zooming away from him through space, or perhaps it was he who was suddenly moving away from it.

"NO!" Blueblood cried, reaching a hoof out towards the plot hole in desperation as it quickly went out of sight. Why was this happening? Why now when he was so close to his destiny?

"Blueblood. Blueblood." The voice kept calling out his name despite what was happening. In fact, it oddly seemed to be getting louder and clearer somehow.

Then he suddenly felt jolt, like he was being shaken…

* * *

"Blueblood!"

Blueblood opened his eyes, feeling somepony's hoof on his shoulder, gently shaking him and saying his name. He groggily became aware that he was in his bed, in his bedroom. He quickly realized that everything that had just happened had only been a dream.

He turned his head and in the light of the lamp beside the bed saw Trixie lying beside him in bed, retracting her hoof from his shoulder now that she could see he was awake. She had an annoyed look on her face.

"Finally, you're awake," she said. "Trixie has been trying to wake you for at least a whole minute! It's time to get up!"

Blueblood looked at the windows. Even with the curtains closed, he could see that it was still dark out. He looked back at Trixie in annoyance.

"Time to get up?" he complained. "Its still dark out!"

Trixie rolled her eyes. "Of course its dark out! We're in space, remember?"

"Huh?" Then their current situation all came back to him. In his groggy state, he had forgotten they were in outer space for a moment. He looked over at the clock, and was surprised to see that it was going on ten AM. It really WAS time to get up. "Oh, right."

"Come now! Lets go see if there's anything left to eat for breakfast, or if everypony else already ate it all."

Blueblood sighed. "Yes, dear," he said. It was true that in preparing the ship to leave Earth, not one of them had considered making sure they had enough food to take with them. Now they were stuck with only what was in the kitchen and pantry, and they weren't sure that would be enough if their time in space ended up taking longer than a few days. And since the improbability drive had sent them light years away from home, and since the hyperdrive they had stolen from Twilight Sparkle was only powerful enough to travel about one light year a day, they weren't looking so good food wise.

They gave each other a morning kiss, and then got out of bed and walked over to the bedroom door, yawning and stretching as they did so.

As they opened the bedroom door and walked out into the hallway, Blueblood thought how weird it was that, for the first time in a long time, he had had a different dream. And this dream had felt different than any other dream he had ever had. It had been so clear, and had felt so real.

"Trixie, I had a weird dream last night," he said as they walked down the hallway, heading to get breakfast and to use the bathroom. "And this one was different from the ones I've _been_ having."

"Really?" said Trixie. "Trixie had a weird dream to."

"Well, in mine I was in front of the plot hole, and there was this voice telling me to go inside it, that my destiny was in there. And then I saw my cutiemark inside the plot hole."

Trixie raised an eyebrow at him. "What do you think it means?"

Blueblood shrugged. "I don't know. Probably nothing. It was probably just the stress of everything that's going on getting to me." However, truthfully, Blueblood wasn't so sure. The dream had felt so real, and so powerful. It left him feeling rattled by it. What if it was some sort of sign?

Trixie woke him out of his thoughts by speaking. "Well, _Trixie's_ dream was definitely odd. All it was was an image! It looked like a circle, like a magic circle used for certain spells, and beside it were a bunch of words, but the words didn't say anything! It was all just gibberish! But it was all so clear! I can remember every detail of it! Every word! I can still see it clearly in her mind when I close my eyes. It's strange."

"Hmm," Blueblood responded.

While they were walking through the hall, they heard the flush of a toilet from inside the bathroom, and then saw Upper Crust come out. She was holding her stomach and had a sickened look on her face.

"Did you get sick again?" Trixie asked her.

Upper Crust nodded. "I don't think I'm made for outer space." She groaned as walked past them.

Blueblood walked into the bathroom while Trixie decided to continue down to the kitchen to get herself some breakfast first. She saw others already up and walking around as she made her way into the kitchen. Looking through the fridge and the cabinets, she found some oatmeal mix.

"Who would have thought a guy like Prince Blueblood would have oatmeal in his house?" Trixie said to herself with a shrug.

She prepared herself a bowl of oatmeal, and then levitated it beside her as she walked into the dining room too eat. She found Jet Set and Upper Crust in there sitting at the long dining room table eating their own breakfast, which was also oatmeal. She sat down as well and began to eat.

Just then, she heard an extremely rude noise come from the kitchen. "DARN IT! THERE IS NOTHING GOOD TO EAT AROUND THIS PLACE!" It was Gilda's voice. No surprise there.

As she ate her oatmeal, the dream she had had once again bubbled up into her mind. This annoyed her. It was so weird, she could see the image so clearly in her mind, down to the very last detail, but it was utter nonsense.

As the day went on, the dream still wouldn't leave her mind. She tried to forget about it, tell herself that it was only a dream and didn't mean anything, but it kept bugging her, and she didn't know why. And there wasn't much she could do on the ship to distract herself from thinking about the dream. All they were doing was waiting for the ship to arrive at the plot hole, and that was going to take a couple days.

Trixie eventually felt that she had to get her dream down on paper. That perhaps that would help get it off her mind, or perhaps help her understand it better. Besides, it wasn't like she currently had anything better to do.

She walked back into the dining room, which she was happy to see was empty now, so she would have a good amount of quiet to work in. She sat down in a seat and lit up her horn with her magic. She cast a conjuring spell and a piece of paper and pencil magically appeared in the air in front of her. She set them down on the table and began to draw her dream. She made sure to include every detail of the dream in her drawing.

Sunset Shimmer came walking into the room. She noticed Trixie drawing something and stopped while walking past her and peered over her shoulder at what she was drawing.

"What are you doing?" she asked, curious.

"None of your business!" said Trixie, not wanting to be bothered while she was working.

Sunset apparently took offense to her response. "What's your problem?" she said, miffed. "I was just curious." She turned and started walking away out of the dining room.

Trixie couldn't help but feel a little bad for snapping at Sunset like that. Apparently a year after learning a lesson or two in friendship had changed her a bit. She had just been reluctant to tell somepony she was drawing her dreams like a little filly.

She sighed and turned to Sunset, who was almost out of the room. "I'm sorry," she forced herself to say. When she saw Sunset pause and look back at her, she continued. "Trixie just had this… really weird dream, and it was really bugging her, and she just felt like she had to get it down on paper. That's what Trixie is doing, okay?"

Sunset raised her eyes in surprise. "You did!?" she said, not in a mocking tone, to Trixie's relief, but actually in an interested one. Sunset walked back over to Trixie's side. "What was it like? The dream, I mean."

Trixie snorted. "Well, if you must know, it was some sort of circle, and a-"

"And a bunch of words with it?" Sunset asked.

Now it was Trixie's turn to look at Sunset in surprise. How had she known? "…Yes," she answered.

"I think I had the exact same dream," Sunset said. She pulled out a piece of paper from behind her and placed it on the table next to Trixie's paper. "I drew this when I woke up this morning."

Trixie looked at Sunset's paper, and her jaw dropped at what she saw. It was just like her own drawing. However, looking at it closer, she could see that it wasn't _exactly_ the same as her drawing. There were a few differences. The circle looked a bit different in detail, and the words beside it were different from her own, but still gibberish none the less. But still, the resemblance of the two drawings was far too similar to be a coincidence.

Trixie looked at Sunset. "You dreamed this?"

She nodded.

Trixie continued to stare at Sunset in amazement. "How is that possible?"

"I don't know, but what do you think this means?"

"I don't… wait!" suddenly Trixie got an idea. She put the two pieces of paper on top of each other and then held them up to the light coming from the chandelier in the room with her magic. The light shown through the two papers, and the two unicorns could see the two drawings overlapping each other. Their jaws dropped when they saw the two sets of words overlapping actually formed a readable paragraph, and the two circles over each other now made perfect sense. It was a magic circle!"

Trixie and Sunset looked at each other and said what they were both thinking at the same time. "That's impossible."

"How could we both have dreams… that are… when you put them together, they actually make something!" said Trixie.

"Don't ask me," said Sunset, just as confused as Trixie was.

They both skimmed over what the words on the papers said. It didn't take them long to realize it was instructions for a spell of some kind.

"It's a spell?" said Trixie. "You think it's a real spell?"

"I don't know, but there's only one way to find out."

"Wait!" Trixie held a hoof up in front of Sunset. "We shouldn't try to cast a spell if we don't know what it will do! I mean, only a complete idiot would do that!"

"I wasn't going to!" Sunset huffed. "I meant we should study this and see if we can figure out…"

The end of Sunset's sentence was droned out by a sudden ear piercing zapping noise, and the flash of a bright light in the room. Trixie and Sunset turned their heads to see another one of those anomaly cracks suddenly appear in the dining room, right across the table from them.

The two mares each let out a scream of panic as they quickly ducked down to the floor behind the table. The sudden appearance of another one of those things had taken Trixie by surprise. She hadn't been expecting to run into more of those up in space.

A few seconds later, there was another bright flash of light, and the anomaly disappeared from the room, just like all the others had.

Trixie caught her breath, breathing with relief now that it was gone. She then did a quick glance around the room to see what effects, if any, the anomaly had had. She didn't have to look long. Beside her, Sunset Shimmer now had a light blond mane and tail, as well as a red bandana on her head. She must have still been in shock from the anomaly because she had a look of confused shock on her face.

"Sunset, that anomaly turned your mane blond and gave you a bandana!" Trixie said, partially in amusement, and also in relief that it seemed the only thing that had been changed was Sunset's mane color and attire. "But I wonder if anything else has been changed."

Sunset looked back at her, still with a confused look on her face. "Who's Sunset?"

Trixie's eyes widened in shock as she suddenly felt a sinking feeling growing in her gut. _Oh no_, she thought. "Um… _you_ are."

Sunset raised an eyebrow at her. "I don't know what the bloody 'ell you're talken' about. My name is Winry! Winry Rockbell!"

"Winry?" Trixie also noticed that Sunset was also now talking with a foreign accent.

Sunset started frantically glancing around the room. "Where am I?"

At that moment, Blueblood, Gilda, Lightning Dust, Jet Set, Upper Crust, Dumbbell, Hoops, and Score came hurrying into the dining room, followed soon after by Flim, Flam, and Surprise. They all had concerned looks on their faces, except for Surprise, who instead seemed to look annoyed for some reason.

"We heard screaming!" said Blueblood as he looked at the two mares. "What happened?"

Trixie pointed at Sunset. "There was another anomaly here!"

The others all looked just as shocked as Trixie had been.

"ON THE SHIP!?" asked Upper Crust.

Trixie nodded. "Yes! And it… did _THAT_ to her!" she continued to point at Sunset, who was staring at the group like she had never met any of them before.

"It turned her blond?" asked Hoops.

"Yes. And she's calling herself Winry now. I think she thinks she's somepony else!"

"It's just like those two doctors who weren't really doctors!" said Lightning Dust.

"Ooo, what's that?" Sunset said, suddenly sounding more chipper. She was looking at the two papers still lying on the dining room table. "Is that some sort of transmutation circle?" She looked up at Trixie. "Blimy, are you a state alchemist?"

"A what?" Trixie asked.

"Ooo, what's that out there?!" Sunset said, ignoring Trixie's question. She was looking out into the hallway that the others had just came in through. Before any of them could say any thing, she suddenly galloped out of the room and down the hall. They all let her go, all of them more interested in talking about this latest event.

"Those anomalies can effect us out here in space?" said Jet Set.

"It makes sense," said Flim, scratching his chin with his hoof. "If the plot hole is going to destroy the universe, I guess it can make changes anywhere, not just on Earth."

"In fact, what if the closer we get to the plot hole, the worse the anomalies will get?" Flam added.

Upper Crust looked like she could faint at any moment.

"Oh man," Dumbbell moaned. "So anything could happen to us at any time that might ruin everything for us, and there's nothing we can do about it?"

"Well, I guess this means we just have to try to stop this plot hole as fast as we can," said Lightning Dust, flying up into the air and pounding her two front hooves together.

"If we can stop it at all," said Jet Set.

Trixie looked at Flim and Flam. "Can't this ship go any faster?"

"No!" Flim and Flam both answered, shaking their heads. "It's going as fast as it can. If we tried going any faster, it would damage the hyperdrive."

"So we really have to wait a whole n'other _day_ to get to the stupid plot hole," Gilda growled, taking a swipe at the nearest wall to her with her claws, and leaving four scratch marks. "I'm gonna go crazy!" She stormed off out of the room.

"Wait up!" Lightning Dust shouted, flying after her best friend.

After a brief awkward silence, Blueblood spoke. "Well, I doubt the plot hole is gonna destroy the entire universe in just one more day. Its taken… what… about two years to grow _this_ big? I'm sure we have plenty of time." He hoped he sounded more sure about that then he actually felt.

They started walking out of the room, except for Trixie, who walked back over to the papers on the table.

Suddenly she felt the ship give a sharp lurch. She lost her balance and fell onto the floor.

"What the heck!?"

Trixie heard the others also shouting in surprise just outside the room, so she got up and ran out into the hallway, finding them all getting up off the floor as well.

"What just happened?" Trixie demanded.

"I don't know!" said Flim. "But we better get down to engineering and find out!"

They all took off and hurried down the hall to the open basement doorway and hurried down the steps. Too their utter horror, they found Sunset Shimmer(still dressed as Winry) standing next to the large cylinder shaped machine that was the hyperdrive. A panel on the hyperdrive was opened up, and several mechanical parts were lying on the floor at Sunset's hooves.

She turned her head to look back at them when she heard them come down the stares. She gave them an innocent smile. "Oh, hi guys," she said.

"WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING!" Flam shouted at her. "WHY DID YOU TAKE THAT APPART? WE NEED THAT!"

"I'm sorry. I couldn't resist!" she said, still smiling innocently. She turned her head back to the hyperdrive and levitated a wrench up beside her and started messing around inside it again. "I just love machines! I just needed to find out what was inside it, and how it all worked! Don't worry, I'll put it all back the way I found it."

It was now obvious to all of them what had happened. That lurch they had felt upstairs had been the ship dropping out of hyperspace.

An angry Gilda took a step towards the unsuspecting mare beside the hyperdrive. "Out'a my way! I'm gonna murder this bitch!"

The rest of them all had to hold the enraged griffon back.

"Its not her fault," said Trixie glumly, using her magic to hold Gilda back where she was, even though she personally also felt like tearing Sunset a new one at the moment. "She was altered by an anomaly. She's not herself."

After several seconds, Gilda let out an angry snort and gave up. They looked back at Sunset, who hadn't seemed to notice what had just happened and was still messing around with the hyperdrive.

"Now what do we do?" groaned Blueblood.

Flim shrugged. "I don't know! _We_ don't know how to put it back together!" he gestured to his brother and himself with a hoof. "It's not _our_ machine. It's Twilight Sparkle's, remember?"

"Well, this is just fan tucking fastic!" growled Dumbbell, stomping a hoof against the floor angrily. "Now, not only are we light years from home, but we're also _stuck_ out here!"

"Oh gosh, I'm going to die in outer space!" Upper Crust wined. She looked like she was on the verge of crying.

Trixie felt her heart sink. They really were bucked now.

Just then, they all heard a loud mechanical hum, and then they felt the ship suddenly lurch again, causing them all to lose their balance again and fall onto the floor.

"What the heck happened now?" growled Gilda.

They all looked over at Sunset, who was attaching a metal panel back onto the hyperdrive where she had taken it off. She turned her head to look back at them and gave them a proud smirk. "I told you I could fix it!" she said.

It was then as they were all getting up that they noticed that all the hyperdrive pieces that had been lying on the floor only moments ago were now gone.

They all stared at Sunset Shimmer in disbelief. Had she really just put it all back together that quickly?

Flim leaped over to one of the computer screens in the room and began looking over it. "We're back in hyperspace!" he said with amazement after a few seconds.

"Not only that, but I've also improved it," said a still smirking Sunset. "I've more than doubled its top speed!"

"She's right!" exclaimed Flim in surprise as he kept looking at the computer screen. "Were now moving over twice as fast as we were before! At this rate we should reach Titan… within several hours!"

They all looked at each other happily. They could all feel their spirits lifting.

"Sunset, you're incredible!" said Blueblood.

Sunset gave him an irritated look. "Why do you keep calling me Sunset? I told you all, my name is Winry!" Then her expression changed like she had just remembered something. "Oh, by the way, I couldn't figure out where this piece went." Sunset levitated a small piece of machinery in the air in front of her for them to see. "But oh well. I suppose there always is at least one piece left over, isn't there? Now to go take something else apart!" She let out an excited giggle as she hurried over to another part of the room.

Everyone turned to look at Blueblood.

"What should we do with her?" asked Lightning Dust.

Blueblood shrugged. "If she's making our ship better, I say we just let her," he said. Then he added, "…Keep an eye on her though."

They could hear Sunset muttering to herself across the room. "Oh, look at this place! All these gadgets and gizmos! Oh, this is just divine! I just have to have a look at it all. Can I please take it all apart and put it back together again? Please?"

* * *

**Author's Note: Sorry this chapter took a little longer than usual. Work has been stressful. I'm trying to get at least one chapter out a week, and I'm not a fast writer.**

**So what did you think of my Fullmetal Alchemist reference? I decided to use Winry instead of Radical Edward just to do something different.**

**So, anyway, be sure to leave a comment and tell me what you think.**


	9. Chapter 8

After several hours of traveling through hyperspace, they were finally almost at Saturn's moon, Titan, and the plot hole. Blueblood had gathered everyone on the bridge to go over their plan for when they arrived.

Blueblood sat in his command seat, waiting impatiently for the last crew member to arrive on the bridge. Surprise.

"Where the heck is Surprise?" Blueblood said in aggravation. "I told everypony to get to the bridge fifteen minutes ago!"

Everyone simply shrugged.

"Have you noticed Surprise has been acting a bit… odd lately?" said Trixie.

Everyone looked at Trixie in confusion.

"Odd how?" asked Blueblood.

"Trixie isn't sure," said Trixie. "She just… doesn't seem to be acting like her usual self."

Blueblood thought for a moment, but then shook his head. "No. I haven't noticed anything."

Everyone else all shook their heads as well.

Then Dumbbell grinned and spoke up. "Maybe it's just her time of the season," he said to Trixie, giving her a dismissive wave of his hoof like she should just forget about it. "I wouldn't worry about it."

Trixie wasn't so sure, but she decided to let it go for now.

"Well, anyway," said Blueblood, "I'm just making sure we all know what the plan is for when we get to the plot hole?"

"Yeah," said Score. "Get to Titan, figure out a way to stop the plot hole, then stop the plot hole and save the universe, and then have a sexy dance party."

Blueblood raised an eyebrow at him. "I don't recall anything about a dance party."

"Are you saying we _shouldn't_ have a sexy dance party?" asked Score.

"Well, I'm not saying _that_."

Suddenly, they heard the sound of hoof beats outside of the room in the hallway, and a second later Surprise galloped into the room. "Sorry," she said hastily. "I was… busy."

"What the heck took you so long?" demanded an irritated Blueblood. "You know how much I hate to be kept waiting!"

"I was… brushing my fur!" the blond pegasus said. "Normal ponies brush their fur, right?"

Blueblood looked over at Trixie. "You see? She doesn't seem to be acting unusual to _me_."

Trixie rolled her eyes.

Suddenly, Sunset Shimmer made a "Ahem" noise. Blueblood looked over at her and saw her glaring at him, tapping her hoof like she was waiting for something. Then he remembered.

"Oh, and Sunse… I mean, _WINRY_ told me she has something she wants to show us all," he said, remembering Sunset thought she was someone named Winry, who apparently was good with machines.

Sunset smiled and walked out to where all of them could see her. Her horn glowed and she levitated some football sized object out from behind her and levitated it in front of her for all of them to see. It was a round metal device of some kind.

"I have an invention!" she said proudly. "I call it an Alchemy Bomb! It works by fusing matter and antimatter to release massive amounts of energy when detonated. If you'd like a demonstration, I could…"

"Um, I'd hate to interrupt you," Flam interrupted Sunset, "but we're about to reach Titan."

"Finally!" exclaimed Gilda.

"Everyone to your stations!" Blueblood ordered.

"DARN IT!" they heard Sunset yell in disappointment as everyone got to their computer stations, and those without a station just stood out of the way.

Flim spoke. "I'm turning off the hyper drive in three… two… one…"

The ship lurched forward as they came out of hyperspace. On the view screen, directly ahead of them was a gigantic sphere with rings around it.

Blueblood leaned forward in his seat. "There it is!" he said. "Titan!"

Trixie looked over at him from her computer screen. "Actually, _that's_ Saturn, the planet Titan orbits. Titan doesn't have rings like that, Saturn does. You did go to school, didn't you?"

"Even I knew that," Hoops said.

Blueblood glared at Trixie in annoyance. "Then where is Titan? And the plot hole?"

"According to radar, they're on the other side of Saturn," said Jet Set.

"Then get us there!" said Blueblood impatiently, slumping back against his seat.

"Okay. I'm going to slingshot us around Saturn," said Dumbbell. He began working the piloting controls in front of him.

They flew at sublight speed around the giant planet Saturn to the other side. During this time, some of them took the time to admire Saturn's beauty on the view screen.

"My gosh, look at those rings!" exclaimed a star struck Upper Crust. "Absolutely beautiful!"

"What are they made of?" asked Hoops.

Everyone in the room shrugged at that question. They were sure some more nerdy pony back home knew, but none of them were that into space to know the answer to that.

Finally, they spotted the yellow moon Titan come into view over Saturn's horizon, and shortly after, a swirling vortex of light right near the yellow orb also came into view. They all gasped when they got their first actual look at the plot hole.

"Sweat Celestia!" exclaimed Flim.

_There it is,_ Blueblood thought to himself. _The thing that's going to destroy everything unless we find a way to stop it._ He pointed at the viewscreen with his hoof. "Okay, there's the plot hole! Head straight for it."

"Would you look at the size of that thing!" said Dumbbell. "It's even bigger then that moon now!"

It was true. The plot hole had grown so big; it was even bigger than the size of Titan.

They flew towards the plot hole. As they got closer, and the swirling vortex became bigger and more visible, Blueblood remembered his dream.

_Could it actually mean something? Could my destiny really be inside the plot hole, and I have to go inside it?_

"Hey! What's that?"

Blueblood was woken from his thoughts by Trixie speaking up. He looked over at her. She was pointing at the view screen. Blueblood turned his head to look at it.

On it, he could see some object floating in space near the plot hole. He squinted to try to see it better. It was dull white in color, and appeared to be shaped like a heart. And it was massive! This thing dwarfed even that humongous ship they had encountered before that had Rarity and Shining Armor on it. Of course, it wasn't nearly as big as the plot hole.

"I don't know," said Jet Set. "It's shaped like a… heart."

"Maybe it's an asteroid or something," said Blueblood dismissively. He wanted to just ignore what ever it was and focus on the plot hole.

As they got closer to it, they were able to get a better look at it. They could make out that it wasn't just a rock. Its surface was too smooth. It looked metallic… and artificial.

"That's no asteroid," said Hoops. "It's a space station!"

"A space _what_?" said Lightning Dust.

Lightning Dust's question went unanswered. Verbally, anyway. Her question _was_ answered _visually_ as they got a bit closer to the plot hole and were able to see that Hoops was right. Just like with the ship they had encountered back when they had first left Earth, they could begin to see tiny windows on the heart shaped object the closer they got to it. It really was a space station!

"Oh my gosh! You're right!" said Upper Crust just as shocked as the rest of them.

"A space station shaped like a giant heart?" said Trixie with a raised eyebrow.

"I think a better question is why the heck is there a buckin' space station out here? And who the heck does it belong to?" said Gilda.

_Oh, great. What fresh new horror have we come across now?_ Blueblood thought to himself with alarm.

Trixie, however, was putting two and two together in her head, and what had just occurred to her made her even more concerned. "Everypony, what if this space station is connected to that other ship we saw, and Celestia?"

They all looked at each other, a look of mutual dread on their faces. Now that they thought of it, it was very likely Celestia had something to do with this, what with the space ship Rarity and Shining Armor had been on, and them saying they didn't want the plot hole stopped, and now a heart shaped space station right next to the plot hole that was even the same color as that other space ship. None of them wanted to risk getting caught by her, especially when they still didn't know _why_ Celestia and Rarity and Shining Armor, and probably the rest of the Element Bearers too, were even doing the things they were doing.

"What do we do now?" asked Score.

"I think we should get out of here," said Trixie.

"Yeah. I think your right," said Blueblood, in complete agreement with her, even though leaving the plot hole right when they had finally gotten to it disappointed him. "Dumbbell, get us out of here!"

"You got it," the brown pegasus replied. He began working the controls in front of him to turn the ship away from the plot hole and the space station. However, much to his confusion, and dismay, the ship didn't turn. Instead, the ship started to shake and rattle slightly. That, and it kept moving forward like it had been, towards the space station.

"What's going on!?" Upper Crust squeaked fearfully.

"Dumbbell, what's going on?!" A very anxious Blueblood repeated Upper Crust's question. "Why are we still heading towards that thing?"

"I don't know!" Dumbbell answered honestly, still trying to get the ship to turn away from their current course, but remaining unsuccessful. "I'm trying, but the ship isn't turning!"

"Why is it shaking?" asked Jet Set as his wife wrapped her forelegs around him.

"I don't know!" Dumbbell shouted. Then he looked at Hoops beside him, who looked just as worried as he felt. "Hoops, did you do anything?"

Hoops looked at his friend with indignation. "Hey, don't look at me!" the orange pegasus said, throwing both his hooves into the air above his head to emphasis.

"Oh no!" Flam suddenly spoke up from where he and his brother stood at a computer screen at the back of the room. "We're caught in some kind of tractor beam! That space station is pulling us towards it!"

Everyone's eyes widened in terror at that piece of information.

"Is there anyway to get us out of it?" asked Blueblood in desperation.

Flim and Flam both shrugged, an expression of helplessness on their faces.

Blueblood looked over at Sunset, who was staring at the viewscreen, looking just as afraid as the rest of them. "Sun- I mean Winry, do you have any ideas?"

Sunset looked at him and shook her head with the same helpless expression that Flim and Flam had.

Blueblood looked back at the viewscreen. They were getting closer and closer to the heart shaped space station. They were now so close to it that its surface was starting to look flat and stretched out forever in all directions, despite the fact that they knew it was rounded. That's how big the space station was!

They could all see row of a rectangle shaped openings going around the side of the space station that they were being pulled towards.

Blueblood could feel his heart pounding in his chest. "Isn't there anything we can do?!" he shouted.

"You can't win," said Surprise suddenly from the back of the room. "But there _are_ alternatives to fighting."

Lightning Dust looked over at the white pegasus, confused. "Like what?"

Surprise turned to face her. "Like magically taking the form of your enemy so that you can hide right amongst them without them ever knowing."

Lightning Dust scowled at her. "Well, we're not changelings, so we can't do that."

"What a pity," said Surprise.

They all watched the viewscreen helplessly as it showed them slowly getting pulled into one of the giant rectangular shaped openings on the side of the space station. Inside the opening, it looked like they were being pulled into some sort of massive hangar bay. Standing or marching around on the floor of the hangar bay were dozens of Princess Celestia's royal guards. That at least answered their question as to who this space station belonged to.

"What are we going to do?" said Upper Crust, still clutching her husband. "They're going to break in here and capture us!"

"We could put the force field up around the ship!" suggested Score.

Blueblood at first felt hopeful, but then remembered why that wouldn't work and shook his head. "No. They will get through that eventually."

Score hung his head.

"Well what else can we do?" argued Gilda. "There are way to many solders down their for us to fight, even for me and Lightning Dust, not to mention who knows how many more guards are in this giant place.

Sunset Shimmer spoke up. "I've got a few crazy idea's that just might work!" she said, her tone actually sounding confident. "But we need a place to hide first!"

"What is it?" asked Trixie.

Suddenly they felt a big *thump* through the floor, and the ship's shaking stopped. It also looked like they had stopped moving. They all realized their ship had landed inside the hangar bay.

"There's no time to explain now!" said Sunset urgently. "We have to hide NOW!"

Just then Blueblood had an idea. "I know a place we can hide!" he said. "Follow me."

Without question, they all got to their hooves and followed Blueblood as he led them out of the bridge and upstairs to his bedroom. He hurried over to a set of double doors in the room and through them open with his magic, revealing a large, walk in closet. In it were fancy horseshoes, collars, suits, jackets, ties, and even, oddly enough, pants.

"Inside!" Blueblood stated.

They all rushed hid inside, and Blueblood used his magic to close and lock the closet doors. It was a tight fit for all of them. Their hides were all pressed up against each other, much to the annoyance of most of them.

"Well this is cozy," grunted Flim sarcastically as he was squished between his brother and Gilda.

"Get off of me!" Gilda growled at Flim, trying to shove him away from her.

"I can't! There's no room!"

"HEY, SOMEPONY'S TOUCHING ME!" squealed Upper Crust.

"WHO'S TOUCHING MY WIFE!" Jet Set shouted angrily.

"Everyone is touching everyone!" said Sunset as she was accidentally shoved into a wall by Lightning Dust. "There's nothing we can do about it!"

Trixie grunted as she was squished between Blueblood and Surprise. "What good is this going to do?" she said in irritation as she shoved Blueblood way from her against the closet doors, earning an "Ow!" from him. "They're going to find us eventually!"

"Don't worry. I have a plan B just in case," grunted Sunset.

Trixie was about to object when they heard the sound of the front doors bursting open downstairs, and the sound of pony guard's hoof steps as they entered the house.

"Everyone stay quiet!" Sunset hissed.

They all did their best to keep quiet and not move as they listened to the sound of the guards hurrying around inside the house, running through the halls and up the stares, shouting to each other, and opening doors.

They all cringed when they heard hoof steps coming into the room. They all cringed again when they heard the knob of the closet doors they were in being messed with. Jet Set had to put his hoof over Upper Crust's mouth to keep her from screaming.

After a few seconds, the noise of the knob outside being messed with stopped and they heard a stallion's voice speak. "This door's locked. Move onto the next."

"But what if they're behind _this_ door?" said another stallion's voice.

"I just said it's locked," said the first stallion again.

"Well, couldn't we knock to be sure?"

"Hey, that's a good idea! You must be one of those idea ponies."

"Why thank you."

"_Oh, for crying out loud_!" Gilda couldn't help but whisper. Trixie quickly grabbed the griffon's beak in her magic and clamped it shut, but it was too late.

"Did you just hear something?" they heard the second stallion say.

"I heard a voice, but I don't hear it anymore, so I'm going to assume there's no pony behind the door," said the first stallion.

Then they heard another set of hooves enter the room. "Hey, I just heard something coming from behind that door," a mare's voice suddenly said.

"We heard a voice," said the first stallion, "but the door's locked."

"Well why don't we break it down just to be sure?" said the mare.

"Okay. I suppose it's worth a shot."

"_Darn it!_" Sunset Shimmer whispered to all of them. "_Time for Plan B. Open the doors and grab them!_"

They all looked at Sunset in surprise.

"What?" said Blueblood.

But the next thing they knew, Sunset's horn glowed, and the two closet doors suddenly swung open, revealing the behinds of three royal guards, a unicorn stallion, a pegasus stallion, and a pegasus mare, who were about to buck the closet doors down with their hind legs.

"Grab 'em!" Sunset repeated, this time as an order.

Without question, and without much else they could do now, they all reached out of the closet and grabbed the three surprised guards by their hind legs and pulled them into the closet with them. Sunset reclosed the closet doors with her magic while the rest of them all gagged the three struggling guards to keep them from shouting and then knocked them out with a few swift blows to their heads.

"Now what do we do?" said Trixie to Sunset. "They're going to notice a few of their guards are missing."

"Okay! Here's the plan," said Sunset as they tie up the three unconscious guards with some of the clothes in the closet. "Three of us will put on their armor and disguise as guards, and then go out there and tell the rest of the guards that there's no one on board. Then, once they're convinced, get back on the ship and we'll take off as fast as we can."

"What are we supposed to tell them happened to us?" said Trixie. "They probably know someone had to be on the ship! What should we tell them happened to all of us?"

Sunset thought for a moment. "Um… tell them the crew got off the ship in an escape pod!"

"But we don't have any escape pods!" said Blueblood.

"They don't know that!" said Sunset.

"Oh. Right."

"Escape pods would have been a good idea to have before leaving Earth though," said Flim.

Blueblood considered the plan for a moment. It actually did sound like it might work, as long as they didn't get caught. "Alright. Lets do it!"

Sunset grinned proudly. "You're welcome."

Suddenly Flam spoke up. "Wait! This plan won't work! If we try to take off, they'll just get us with their tractor beam again!"

Everyone's spirits fell at that. They should have known it wouldn't be that simple.

"He's right," said Flim.

"Darn it!" Gilda growled. "What do we do now?"

Sunset thought for a second. "I have an idea." She looked up at them. "Whoever's going is going to also have to find a way to disable the tractor beam, so that we can get out of here without a problem. I'd go myself, but we only have one set of unicorn armor, and its too big for me." She pointed at Blueblood. "You are the only unicorn here big enough to where the unicorn armor."

Blueblood frowned. He looked around him at everyone else in the room, but could see she was right. He let out a sigh. "Lucky me," he groaned. He took the unicorn guard's helmet off and put it on himself. "This is going to completely mess up my mane," he complained.

In addition to Blueblood, it was decided that Dumbbell would wear the pegasus stallion's armor, and Lightning Dust would wear the pegasus mare's armor.

"How do we look?" asked Lightning Dust after the three of them were fully dressed in the armor.

"Like royal guards," said Trixie.

"Perfect!"

Blueblood, however, was still worried about something. "Promise you wont take off without us?" he asked the rest of them nervously.

"Why would we do that?" said Flim. "We're all friends! Don't you trust us?"

"And Trixie is your _marefriend_!" stated Trixie, getting right in Blueblood's face. "Do you honestly think she would leave without her coltfriend?"

"I'm sorry," said Blueblood, lowering his ears against his head. "I'm still getting used to the whole 'friendship' thing. Its still rather difficult for me to trust others, especially in life threatening situations like this."

"Look at it this way," said Flam. "How will we know the tractor beam is disabled unless you three get back here and tell us?"

Blueblood thought for a moment. "Hmm. Good point."

"Okay, lets go!" said Lightning Dust, a confident expression on her face.

Blueblood was about to follow, but then he turned back to Trixie really quick.

"Can I have a kiss before I go," he asked her, giving her a sheepish smile.

Trixie kissed him on the lips, and then she grabbed his head in her fore hooves and looked him right in the eyes. "Don't screw this up, and you'll get more than just a kiss when you get back."

_Yay!_ Blueblood thought to himself. "Yes, m'lady," he said with a grin, and then turned and followed Lighting Dust and Dumbbell out the closet doors.

Lightning Dust turned to look at Dumbbell and Blueblood. "Okay, you two, just follow my lead. I have experience with military. Just stand up straight, keep a serious look on your faces, and don't talk unless spoken to. Oh, and be sure to salute you superior officer! Now lets go!"

As they were walking out of Blueblood's bedroom into the hallway, Dumbbell muttered over to Blueblood, "Dude, your marefriend has you totally whipped."

Blueblood glared at the snickering pegasus jock walking beside him. "At least I _have_ a marefriend," he said.

At that, Dumbbell stopped snickering hung his head. "Darn it."

Lightning Dust glared back at the two stallions in annoyance. "Hey, would you two shut up!" she hissed. "We're trying to act like guards!"

Dumbbell and Blueblood were brought back to reality and stood up straight and shut their mouths, and continued to follow Lightning Dust through the hallway.

They quickly found a group of guards heading towards the stare case. They nonchalantly sidled up behind the guards and joined them as they headed down the stares to the first floor. Once there, they met up with another group of guards waiting in the foyer. One of them stepped forward, a light gray unicorn stallion, and the guards Lightning, Dumbbell, and Blueblood were with all put their hooves to their foreheads in salute. Lightning, Dumbbell, and Blueblood quickly followed suit and saluted him as well.

"At ease," the unicorn guard said in a gruff voice. "Did you find anything?"

One of the guards in front of Lightning, Dumbbell, and Blueblood, a pegasus stallion, shook his head. "No, sir. The entire ship's deserted."

The other guard, who was apparently the superior, raised his eye brow. "How can that be? Where could they have gone?"

"I don't know, sir."

Lightning Dust decided to risk it and spoke up. "Permission to speak, sir?"

Everyone turned to look at her. She hoped she hadn't just made a huge mistake.

"What is it, solder?" asked the superior guard.

Lightning gulped nervously. "I believe the crew may have gotten off the ship in an escape pod, sir!"

The gruff voiced superior guard walked up in front of her. "What makes you say that?" he asked.

"Err, um," Lightning Dust struggled to come up with an answer as quickly as she could, "we searched the ship from top to bottom, sir, and found no sign of them. It's the only logical explanation, sir. Also, we found no escape pod on board, so the crew must have taken it, because only complete morons would have flown off into space without an escape pod, sir."

The guard stared at Lightning Dust for a few moments, and then to their surprise and relief, he let out a chuckle.

"You have a good point there, solder," he said. Then he got serious again. "Very well. All of you return to your posts."

"Yes, sir!" all the guards said, saluting him, and then proceeded to march out the front doors of the house. Lightning, Dumbbell, and Blueblood followed suit with them, all three of them breathing a sigh of relief that that had worked.

As they walked out into the large, brightly lit hangar bay, they couldn't help but look around them at the place in awe. It was enormous! Then again, it had to be in order to fit an entire space ship inside it, but still it was quite a sight to see. They looked over at the large opening their ship had come in through, and gaped in amazement. The only thing separating them from the deadly vacuum of space was a thin, light pink, magical force field stretching across the opening.

Lightning Dust spotted a doorway at the back of the hangar bay and motioned to Dumbbell and Blueblood to follow her. They broke away from the rest of the solders, while still acting like guards and keeping up the appearance that they were supposed to be there, and marched back to the doorway, trying to bring as little attention to themselves as possible.

They entered through the doorway and found themselves in a white and brightly lit corridor. Seeing that it seemed to be deserted, they broke out of character and let out a sigh of relief that they had managed to get this far.

"This place must be huge!" groaned Lightning as she looked from left to right down the corridor. "How the heck are we supposed to know where the tractor beam power source or controls are?"

"Hey, there's a map!" said Dumbbell suddenly. He pointed over to a large, square sign on the wall of the corridor. To their joy, it actually was a map of the inside of the space station. "Maybe we can get our bearings on that."

They walk over to the map on the wall and began looking at it. There was a lot to look at. The map had to be divided into each floor of the space station, and there were _a lot_ of floors.

"Okay, so we're _here_…" Dumbbell pointed to a little red dot on the map that read 'You are here'.

"Okay, and it looks like there are four different tractor beam machines here, here, here, and here." Lightning Dust pointed to four areas on the map with her hoof.

Blueblood groaned. "And we have to go around to each one?! That will take forever!"

"Maybe not," said Lightning Dust. "Maybe we could just take out the one on our side of the station." She pointed to it with her hoof. "That's the one they'll probably try to get us with when we take off, after all. And while they're wondering why it isn't working, we can make our get away!"

Blueblood looked at Lightning Dust. "You better be right about this."

"Whoa! Look at this!" Dumbbell suddenly spoke up, getting Lightning and Blueblood's attention. He pointed to a spot on the map. "This says Princess Luna's room here!"

Blueblood and Lightning Dust took a closer look at where Dumbbell was pointing. Indeed, one of the rooms was labeled 'Princess Luna's Quarters'.

"Auntie Luna?! She's here?!" exclaimed Blueblood excitedly.

"Apparently," said Dumbbell.

Blueblood thought back to Doctor Whooves words. "The Doctor said we needed Princess Luna," he said to Lightning Dust and Dumbbell. "That she knows something important, but she can't remember it, or something. We should get her and take her with us."

Lightning Dust wasn't so sure. "Are you sure?" she said to Blueblood. "She's probably in better hooves here! After all, last time I saw her, she was in a coma."

Blueblood sighed. He honestly wasn't sure, but... "We have to take her with us! If she knows something that could help us, then we need her. After all, the universe is going to be destroyed unless we can stop it! She may be our only hope!"

Lightning Dust was silent for a moment, but then she nodded. "Okay, but _you_ better be right about _this_."

"Fine," said Blueblood.

"Okay," said Lightning Dust. "So you two go kidnap the princess, and I'll go take care of the tractor beam thing."

Blueblood glared at Lightning Dust. "We're not _kidnapping_ her!" he said indignantly. "If anything, we're _rescuing_ her!"

Lightning Dust rolled her eyes. "Whatever! We'll all meet back here, right?"

Dumbbell and Blueblood nodded. "Right!" they both said.

"Alright! Good luck!" said Lightning Dust as she turned and flapped her wings, taking flight down the corridor.

Blueblood and Dumbbell turned and trotted off down the opposite direction.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Sorry this chapter took longer than expected. You should all know chapters are going to start taking more time to update. In addition to my full time job, I'm also now working on a website, working to start a writing job, and I also play in a Yugioh tournament on Sundays.

So anyway, how did you like this chapter? Be sure to leave a comment. Hearing from you guys gives me encouragement.


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